February 22, 2023

NEED A BLACK HAWK

ON SET BY FRIDAY?
Meet the team that’s
become the town’s go-to
for military hardware

WRITERS DEBATE THE STRIKE

(THE PREVIOUS ONE)
As WGA negotiations loom,
scribes look to the 2007-08
work stoppage for insight

RULE NO. 1:
NEVER OUTSHINE THE STAR
Unpacking the unspoken
politics of the red carpet —
‘I wanted to look good, but not
too good’

EVERYONE
HEARTS

Normal People turned Irish newcomer

PAUL MESCAL into a global sex symbol. Three years later,
he’s selling out Streetcar in the West End
and has a surprise Oscar nomination for Aftersun:
‘It’s been a f—ing wild year’
FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM

FEATURES
36 Everybody Hearts Paul
Normal People plucked Paul Mescal
from anonymity, sparking a global
infatuation. Now, Nicole Kidman’s
barging into his dressing room, Ridley
Scott’s gift wrapping Gladiator 2 for
him and Aftersun has earned the Irish
actor a surprise Oscar nomination.
Issue No. 7, February 22, 2023
42 Need a Black Hawk on Set
by Friday? Call This Couple
How married product place-
ment specialists Adam and Cat
Stone became Hollywood’s
go-to duo for navigating the
tricky minefield of procuring
military hardware.
46 2023 Ambies
Voter Guide
Presenting its third annual
awards ceremony March 7,
The Podcast Academy is
determined to establish itself
as the preeminent arbiter of
audio excellence.
“If you’re ready to go to a point where it
could break apart and be shit, and you
can see the seams of everything, that’s
when it starts getting good,” says Paul
Mescal. He was photographed Feb. 10
at The Record Room in Los Angeles.
Styling by Felicity Kay
S.S. Daley sweater, Simone Rocha pants.
On the cover: AMI coat, Wales Bonner shirt,
Ron Dorff tank top and shorts, Sunspel socks,
Wales Bonner x Adidas shoes.
Photographed here and
for the cover by Ryan Pfluger
50 ‘I Want the Audience
to Be Confronted’
Double Oscar nominee
Ruben Östlund talks about
his darkly comic — and
unapologetically scatological
— Triangle of Sadness, in the
running for best picture.

THE REPORT
9 Shadows of the Writers Strike
Loom Large
As preparations keep up for the WGA’s
2023 contract talks, scribes look back at
the 100-day strike in 2007-08 for gains,
losses and lessons learned.
12 The Agency Race to Be No. 4
Amid consolidation in the Hollywood
talent agency landscape, multiple
firms are touting themselves as full-
service rivals to the Big 3 as M&A
chatter intensifies.
14 Feinberg Forecast
16 7 Days of Deals
ABOUT TOWN
18 Person of Interest: Nat Wolff
Starring in Prime Video’s The
Consultant, the former child star is
growing up for good.
19 New Doc Spotlights a Tragic Toll
on PCH in Malibu
Producer Michel Shane — whose daugh-
ter was killed at age 13 by a speeding
driver — has spearheaded a film looking
at the causes and potential solutions
to a long string of fatalities on the Malibu
stretch of that road.
22 Rambling Reporter
24 Hitched, Hatched, Hired
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Issue No. 7, February 22, 2023
24
THE BUSINESS
26 Creative Space: Ike Barinholtz
The comedy workhorse on his Celebrity
Jeopardy! win, making Mel Brooks laugh
and Hollywood’s biggest problems right
now: “If you’re able to get a movie made
in 2023, you’re a superhero.”
28 Redefining What a Hero Looks
and Sounds Like
For Antonio Banderas, the star and voice
behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the
film’s Oscar nom is the culmination of a
two-decades-long journey.
30 Why Elvis’ Austin Butler
Was the ‘Fitting-Room GOAT’
Ike Barinholtz photographed by Birdie Thompson
4 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
26 34
STYLE 24
Raquel Welch on closing night
at the Cannes Film Festival
32 Never Overshadow the Star: in 1966, the year in which she
Inside Red Carpet Politics starred in Fantastic Voyage
At major Hollywood events, many and One Million Years B.C.
(though not all) celebrities adhere to a 26
number of under-the-radar fashion do’s “I think when people in comedy
and don’ts depending on where they fit in talk about cancel culture,
what they’re mad about is
the evening’s pecking order: “I wanted to being called out on their shit,”
look good, but not too good, you know?” says Ike Barinholtz. He was
photographed Feb. 7 at his
home office in Los Angeles.
34 Purple Reigns, Metallics Shine
at the BAFTA Awards 34
Everything Everywhere All at
Once stars Ke Huy Quan (in
REVIEWS Giorgio Armani) and Michelle
Yeoh (in Dior) at the Feb. 19
BAFTA Awards in London.
54 A Topsy-Turvy Television Winter
Preconceived notions were flipped on
their heads these past few months as
reviewers rallied around a video game
adaptation, Peacock piqued interest
and Apple TV+ stumbled (though all hail
Harrison Ford, small-screen comic MVP).
YEOH: DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES. WELCH: ASSOCIATED REPORTERS/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES.
THR INSIDER
58 The 10 Best Schools in the U.S.
for Costume Design
60 Ram Bergman’s Tricks
of the Trade
The Glass Onion producer and PGA
Award nominee on his successful
creative partnership with Rian Johnson.
62 ‘I Was Only Half-Alive
If I Couldn’t’ Act
SAG honoree Sally Field reflects on her
60-year career inhabiting indelible roles.
 THE HOLLY WOOD REPORTER
IS OWNED & PUBLISHED BY
PME HOLDINGS, LLC

Nekesa Mumbi Moody Jay Penske

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CHAIRMAN & CEO
Jeanie Pyun Peter B. Cury Patricia Mays Sudie Redmond Degen Pener David Katz
DEPUTY EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR, NEWS EXECUTIVE MANAGING EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR Gerry Byrne
VICE CHAIRMAN
Erik Hayden Lacey Rose Ash Barhamand Scott Feinberg
EXECUTIVE EDITOR, BUSINESS EXECUTIVE EDITOR, TELEVISION VISUAL MEDIA DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE EDITOR, AWARDS George Grobar
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
EDITOR-AT-LARGE Kim Masters
Sarlina See
FILM CHIEF ACCOUNTING OFFICER

FILM EDITOR Aaron Couch • SENIOR FILM WRITERS Borys Kit, Pamela McClintock • TECH EDITOR Carolyn Giardina • FILM WRITER Mia Galuppo Craig Perreault
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER
TELEVISION
Todd Greene
TELEVISION EDITOR, WEST COAST Lesley Goldberg • TELEVISION FEATURES EDITOR Mikey O’Connell
EVP, BUSINESS AFFAIRS AND CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER
TELEVISION WRITER Rick Porter • WRITER-AT-LARGE James Hibberd
Paul Rainey
REVIEWS EVP, OPERATIONS & FINANCE
REVIEWS EDITOR Jon Frosch • CHIEF FILM CRITIC David Rooney • CHIEF TELEVISION CRITIC Daniel Fienberg Tom Finn
TELEVISION CRITIC Angie Han • ARTS & CULTURE CRITIC Lovia Gyarkye EVP, OPERATIONS & FINANCE
Jenny Connelly
SENIOR EDITOR, COPY Mike Barnes • SENIOR EDITOR, FILM Rebecca Keegan EVP, PRODUCT & ENGINEERING
SENIOR EDITOR, DIVERSITY & INCLUSION Rebecca Sun • SENIOR EDITOR, MUSIC Mesfin Fekadu Debashish Ghosh
SENIOR FEATURES EDITOR Julian Sancton • SENIOR EDITOR Seija Rankin • AWARDS EDITOR Tyler Coates • DEPUTY AWARDS EDITOR Beatrice Verhoeven MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

SENIOR WRITERS Seth Abramovitch, Gary Baum • MEDIA & BUSINESS WRITER Alex Weprin Dan Owen
EVP, GM OF STRATEGIC INDUSTRY GROUP
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS EDITOR Georg Szalai • SENIOR STAFF WRITER Chris Gardner
SENIOR BUSINESS EDITOR Ashley Cullins • BUSINESS WRITER Caitlin Huston • BUSINESS & LEGAL WRITER Winston Cho David Roberson
EVENTS EDITOR Kirsten Chuba • DIGITAL MEDIA WRITER J. Clara Chan • CULTURE WRITER Evan Nicole Brown SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SUBSCRIPTIONS
ASSISTANT TO THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Sydney Odman Judith R. Margolin
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL
COPY
MANAGING EDITOR Jennifer H. Levin Ken DelAlcazar
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCE
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Darah Head • SENIOR COPY EDITOR Lisa de los Reyes • SENIOR COPY EDITOR/FILM CRITIC Sheri Linden
Lauren Utecht
ART SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES
DESIGN DIRECTOR Kelsey Stefanson • ART DIRECTORS Nicholas Brawley, Christopher Hawkins
Marissa O’Hare
SENIOR DESIGNER Clare Lynne Ramirez • ART PRODUCTION MANAGER Amanda Tannen SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
PHOTO & VIDEO Nelson Anderson
SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Chelsea Archer • PHOTO EDITORS Tristan Cassel, Megan Downie • PHOTO PRODUCER Ava Selbach SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, CREATIVE
ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Naomy Pedroza • PHOTO EDITOR-AT-LARGE Jenny Sargent Rachel Terrace
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, LICENSING & BRAND DEVELOPMENT
VICE PRESIDENT, VIDEO PRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT Jason Rovou Adrian White
SENIOR PRODUCER Lesley Corral VICE PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL
VIDEO EDITOR, NEWS Jason Bass • VIDEO EDITOR
Colin Burgess Anne Doyle
HOST/PRODUCERS Neha Illiparambil, Tiffany Taylor VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES
THR.COM Brian Levine
MANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL Kimberly Nordyke • MANAGING EDITOR, EAST COAST Jackie Strause • DEPUTY EDITOR, EAST COAST Hilary Lewis VICE PRESIDENT, REVENUE OPERATIONS

OVERNIGHT EDITOR Abid Rahman • STAFF EDITOR, DIGITAL Ryan Gajewski • ASSOCIATE EDITORS Lexy Perez, Christy Piña, Carly Thomas, Abbey White Brian Vrabel
HEAD OF INDUSTRY, CPG AND HEALTH
REPORTER Katie Kilkenny • E-COMMERCE WRITER Danielle Directo-Meston • COPY CHIEF Pete Keeley
SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR, DIGITAL Christina Pompa-Kwok • DIGITAL PHOTO EDITOR Laura Tucker Brooke Jaffe
VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLIC AFFAIRS & STRATEGY
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Ryan Fish • SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Anaja Smith
Cassy Hough
INTERNATIONAL HEAD OF INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY
INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR Kevin Cassidy Constance Ejuma
EUROPE BUREAU CHIEF Scott Roxborough • ASIA BUREAU CHIEF Patrick Brzeski • CANADA BUREAU CHIEF Etan Vlessing • U.K. CORRESPONDENT Alex Ritman VICE PRESIDENT, SEO
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Dan Feinberg
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar • Ruven Afanador • Austin Hargrave • Scott Johnson • Carol McColgin • David Needleman VICE PRESIDENT AND ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL
Doug Bandes
Elisabeth Deutschman Rabishaw Victoria Gold HEAD OF LIVE EVENT PARTNERSHIPS

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CO-PUBLISHER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CO-PUBLISHER Ellen Dealy
VICE PRESIDENT,
Cathy Field AUDIENCE MARKETING & SPECIAL PROJECTS
ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & INDUSTRY RELATIONS Frank McCallick
ADVERTISING VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL TAX
VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT Carra Fenton • VICE PRESIDENT, ENTERTAINMENT Scott Perry Gabriel Koen
MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENTERTAINMENT Debra Fink VICE PRESIDENT, TECHNOLOGY
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LUXURY, RETAIL & REAL ESTATE Sue Chrispell • EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CONSUMER CeCe Tousey Jamie Miles
VICE PRESIDENT, E-COMMERCE
VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL Alison Smith-Pleiser
KOREA & CHINA Hattie Yu • DIRECTOR, LATIN REGIONS Marcia Olival Jennifer Garber
HEAD OF INDUSTRY, TRAVEL
INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Tommaso Campione • ACCOUNT DIRECTOR, NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA & SOUTHEAST ASIA Lisa Cruse
ENTERTAINMENT SALES ASSOCIATE Mitchell Brown • GLOBAL SALES & MARKETING ASSOCIATE Lourdes Costa
Jerry Ruiz
VICE PRESIDENT, ACQUISITIONS AND OPERATIONS
DIGITAL MEDIA
Joni Antonacci
DIRECTOR, ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT Helen Choi • DIGITAL ACCOUNT MANAGER Alex Torres • ASSOCIATE ACCOUNT MANAGER Laura Ruiz VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCTION OPERATIONS
MARKETING Karen Reed
VICE PRESIDENT, HEAD OF MARKETING Christopher Santorella VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCE
MARKETING MANAGER Lauren Van Vleet • ART DIRECTOR Haroon Adalat • DESIGNER, MARKETING Greg Mako Kay Swift
VICE PRESIDENT, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
EVENTS
VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS & CONFERENCES Curtis Thompson Keir McMullen
VICE PRESIDENT, HUMAN RESOURCES
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, EVENTS & CUSTOM CONTENT PRODUCTION Karen Ostling • DIRECTOR, EVENTS & CUSTOM CONTENT Steven Huizar
Matthew Cline
LICENSING HEAD OF AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
REPRINTS & PERMISSIONS EnVeritas Group (864) 241-0779, email licensing@enveritasgroup.com
Mike Ye
OPERATIONS VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC PLANNING & ACQUISITIONS
PRODUCTION MANAGER Mark Conn Nici Catton
HEADQUARTERS VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCT DELIVERY

11175 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025 Noemi Lazo

VICE PRESIDENT, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
PHONE (323) 525-2000 • EDITORIAL EMAIL THRnews@thr.com • ADVERTISING (323) 525-2013 • ADVERTISING EMAIL advertise@thr.com
AND MARKETING OPERATIONS
NEW YORK 475 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017
Scott Ginsberg
PHONE (212) 493-4200 • FAX (646) 654-5637 • NEW YORK SALES OFFICE (212) 493-4193 HEAD OF INDUSTRY, PERFORMANCE MARKETING
SUBSCRIPTIONS Sonal Jain
U.S. (866) 525-2150 • OUTSIDE U.S. (845) 267-4192 • hollywoodreporter.com/subscribe VICE PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATE GENERAL COUNSEL
&
 ↑ TV
Tough Choices
Is AMC Networks’ James
Dolan prepping a sale? p. 16

M&A
Battle to Be No. 4?
The Re ort Behind the Headlines
The talent agency race
takes on a new shape. p. 12

Heat Index

James Goldston
The former ABC News
president lands at the
Blackstone-backed Candle
Media with a mandate
to create a splash in the
nonfiction and doc space.

Eric Guggenheim
The Magnum P.I. showrunner
falls victim to NBC’s post-
football Sunday woes, as the
show’s move from CBS for
season five drops 30 percent
from its 2022 average. Writers Debate the (Last) Strike:
Why ’07-08 Was Just a Prelude
As preparations progress on the Writers Guild’s 2023 talks, scribes look back to the 100-day walkout
for lessons: ‘The fact that we got our foot in the door even just a little bit, that was the beginning’
Debra J. Fisher BY KATIE KILKENNY

A
The Ginny & Georgia
showrunner sees the Netflix s Hollywood’s writers negotiating committee co-chair to today’s SVOD giants like Netflix
drama maintain its hold at
No. 1 on Nielsen’s streaming prepare for a round of Billy Ray (Captain Phillips) says and Disney+. Establishing guild
DOLAN: SYLVAIN GABOURY/PATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGES. GOLDSTON: DANIEL ZUCHNIK/GETTY IMAGES. GUGGENHEIM: JC OLIVERA/GETTY IMAGES. FISHER: JESSE GRANT/

list, as HBO’s The Last of Us union negotiations that is that internal debates erupt every contract coverage for digital-
makes its chart debut at No. 6.
expected to be especially combat- negotiation cycle — the conversa- exclusive titles and improving
ive and potentially even trigger tion has intensified and spilled compensation when projects were
GETTY IMAGES FOR NETFLIX. MUSK: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES. ZUCKERBERG: KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES. NOXON: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES.

Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg
During an ad downturn,
the tech titans turn to
consumer revenue with
pay-for-verification bets for
Twitter and Facebook.
But can those plans scale?
Showbiz Stocks
$22.93 (+3.3%)
PARAMOUNT GLOBAL
(PARA)
Paramount’s big bet on the
Taylor Sheridan universe (with
or without Kevin Costner) and
its plans for Showtime seem
to have gained approval from
shareholders.
$91.79 (-2.8%)
ALPHABET (GOOG)
Google the company traces
its origins to Susan Wojcicki’s
garage. Now the veteran exec
and YouTube CEO is retiring to
pursue other ventures.
Feb. 14-21
a strike, some are revisiting the
wins and losses of their last work
stoppage, in 2007-08. The 100-day
Writers Guild of America strike
more than 15 years ago rocked
the industry as the union fought
in large part for a greater cut of
what was then called “new media”
— projects distributed or rerun
over the internet, on iPods or
cellphones. In an action that cost
the L.A. economy $2.1 billion, per
the Milken Institute, deals were
lost, scripted series including
30 Rock, Lost and Pushing Daisies
were curtailed or forever altered,
late night shows were hobbled
and the Golden Globes were
reduced to a press conference.
Though periodically revisiting
2007-08 is hardly unusual —
screenwriter and three-time WGA
out more into the open this year.
As speculation over whether the
guild may strike again after its
contract expires May 1 pervades
the industry, in recent months
former negotiating committee
member Shawn Ryan (The Shield)
and current negotiating com-
mittee member Adam Conover
(The G Word), among others, have
weighed in with their takes on
what the 2007-08
action did and did
not accomplish.
In conversations
with THR, many
Noxon
writers who picketed
during that time and are working
in the industry today still feel the
strike was warranted, maintain-
ing that it gave the union a crucial
foothold in new media, precursors
Illustration by Joyce Cho
reused on new-media platforms
like iTunes became key issues
during the work stoppage; eventu-
ally, the WGA made these gains
in its 2008 contract while ceding
some ground (proposals to double
the DVD residuals formula and
establish jurisdiction over real-
ity television, for example, were
scrapped). New media “was such
a nascent issue, but ultimately
the fact that we got our foot in the
door even just a little bit, that was
the beginning,” says Marti Noxon
(Sharp Objects, UnREAL), who was
then the showrunner for Private
Practice. She says of the strike, “I
will defend it to this day.”
Another lasting positive
outcome that emerged from the
strike itself, some writers say
now, was a sense of collective

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 9 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 The Report
Behind the Headlines
power and potential. Several
believe the guild’s general align-
ment during the strike improved
its unity and leverage in battles
that followed, such as during its
2017 negotiations (when more
than 96 percent of members voted
to authorize a strike; the WGA did
not end up calling one) and the
guild’s campaign against agency
packaging fees (when more than
7,000 of a then-estimated 8,800
members with agents fired them
— the Guild now says fewer mem-
bers at that point had agents).
Still, the immense emotional
and financial pressures the
strike wrought — from the death
of reportedly dozens of overall
deals to strained intra-industry
relationships — are not easily
forgotten. Says a veteran show-
runner, whose studio deal was
canceled by force majeure during
the strike, “It was brutal. It took a
big emotional toll. It took a finan-
cial toll on my family and a lot of
families that I knew.” (The show-
runner still believes the strike
was a “necessary fight.”) Howard
Gordon (Accused), at the time
the showrunner of 24, recalls
crewmembers who were unhappy
with the effect the WGA’s action
was having on their livelihoods:
“Some of those things just didn’t
quite heal, some of the feelings of
the people who were on the crew
who lost their jobs or were under
some real duress because of [the
strike],” he says.
Today, the majority of the
WGA West’s approximately
13,000 members have never lived
through a guild-organized work
stoppage: The western branch of
the guild reports that only about
one-third of its current members
joined before the 2007-08 strike.
And the industry landscape has
transformed since the 100-day
action, presenting
writers with dis-
tinct issues to tackle
in their upcoming
Gordon negotiations, many of
which relate to how
the subscription-based streaming
model has changed the writing
profession, from “mini rooms” to
short TV seasons.
Notes one seasoned writer,
who asked to remain anonymous,
of the difference between 2007
and 2023, “We were expanding
in ’07. We hadn’t hit the reces-
sion yet. We hadn’t gone through
The first day of the WGA strike on Nov. 5,
2007, outside CBS and Paramount studios.
COVID. We were not in a recovery
mode.” No Good Nick showrun-
ner David H. Steinberg recalls
that in 2007, many writers were
desperately trying to book a job
to bolster against the coming dry
spell. In his view, the dynamic
has changed today; as strike
conjecture proliferates, “writers
are not focused on trying to get a
job before the strike; they’re just
focused on trying to get a job.”
Some of the players remain the
same, however. Carol Lombardini,
who in 2007-08 was the No. 2 for
the studios’ then-chief negotiator,
now leads talks for the Alliance
of Motion Picture and Television
Producers (AMPTP), advocating
for the studios and streamers,
while David Young remains the
chief negotiator and executive
director of the WGA West. Patric
Verrone, the hard-charging WGA
West president who became one
of the faces of the strike in ’07-08,
is a member of the 2023 negotiat-
ing committee, and then-WGA
East president Michael Winship is
back in that post.
In the meantime, preparations
for this year’s negotiations are
barreling ahead. On Feb. 11 and
Feb. 15, the Writers Guild held
meetings (with two more set for
Feb. 23) in which leaders pre-
sented their initial bargaining
agenda to members for feedback:
Insiders said items in discussion
included setting minimum TV
writing staff sizes, improving
residuals for film and TV writ-
ers, and establishing a minimum
number of weeks for employment
on a TV series. Contract captains,
WGA members who volunteer to
assist with internal communica-
tions during negotiations, have
already reached out to some writ-
ers. And on the management side,
major companies have accelerated
the timelines of writers rooms in
case of a strike, insiders say.
One top entertainment attor-
ney adds that some companies are
stockpiling scripts and scrutiniz-
ing shooting schedules, because
with SAG-AFTRA and DGA talks
imminent, “it’s not just the writ-
ers who could be going on strike,”
this person says.

How Much Is That Film Worth? Buyers Don’t Have Great Comps
Dealmakers gathering at the European Film Market see contradictions abound as streamers look for more generic,
action-thriller fare, while theatrical distributors eye standout original ideas BY SCOTT ROXBOROUGH

A t Berlin’s European Film Market, which wrapped

Feb. 22, the indie industry was back in force, and
plenty of deals got done. Amazon Prime Video snatched
up international rights to AGC Studio’s The Order, a white
supremacist thriller starring Jude Law and Nicholas
Hoult from Assassin’s Creed director Justin Kurzel;
also, in a deal with sales outfit Rocket Science, Amazon
grabbed pirate-themed survival thriller The Bluff, star-
ring Zoe Saldaña from Anthony and Joe Russo’s AGBO
a movie is worth has never been harder. “No one has any
confidence anymore what works theatrically,” notes one
veteran sales agent. “The old models have fallen apart.”
In the past, international distributors could apply a crude
formula to determine the minimum box office a film is likely
to make in their territory. It went along the lines of: “Genre
plus stars plus director equals X.” An action thriller with an
A-list cast was a safe bet. An issue drama or an indie com-
edy packed with no-names was super risky. Buyers would
Indie films that feel different attracted attention, and
buyers, in Berlin. Tina Satter’s Reality, a drama about
NSA whistleblower Reality Winner starring Sydney
Sweeney and based entirely on the unedited FBI tran-
script of her FBI interrogation, was a buzzy title at EFM.
And Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry, a biopic comedy about
the rise and fall of the once-proud smartphone company,
was snatched up by Paramount for most of the world
outside of North America. “The trend seems to be that

STRIKE: ALEXANDRA WYMAN/WIREIMAGE. GORDON: MONICA SCHIPPER/GETTY IMAGES.

banner. Black Bear International sold out most of Europe
and a number of other international territories for Nicolas
Cage serial killer movie Longlegs, and the Jamie Bell-
Margaret Qualley musical biopic Fred & Ginger. Buyers
across Europe pounced on Dogman, Luc Besson’s come-
back movie, starring Caleb Landry Jones, which Kinology
is selling, with a domestic deal expected soon. And there
was considerable heat around Voltage’s Milli Vanilli biopic
Girl You Know It’s True, produced
by Germany’s Leonine Studios.
But with the theatrical business
in disarray — box office is slowly
climbing in most countries, but not
for all demographics, and is not
yet close to the levels seen pre-
pandemic — deciding how much
do “comps”: look at the box office of an older, similar project
(the last Liam Neeson action thriller or period drama star-
ring Emma Thompson) and come up with an offer.
But, post-COVID, successful comps have become
few and far between, with most indie movies unable to
secure a theatrical release. “If it’s not a Marvel or a horror
movie, you’re probably not going to sell theatrical,” notes
Dean Devlin of Electric Entertainment, who produced
such indie-financed hits as
Stargate and Independence Day
but now focuses on straight-to-TV
and straight-to-streamer fare like
Syfy’s The Ark. “You are going
to have breakout hits, but it’s
tough to make a business out of
that,” notes Devlin.
anything that’s extraordinary or really out of the ordinary
will get people to come out of their homes to watch
in a theater,” adds a buyer for a U.S. indie distributor.
“Whereas anything that’s generic, it’s: ‘I’ll wait till that
comes out on Netflix.’ ”
At the same time, the streamers — which, aside from
a few big-ticket buys, are the primary market for post-
theatrical ancillary rights — are increasingly demanding
more mainstream fare. This is creating a strange dynamic
among buyers, who want standout originals for the
cinema and generic fare (think “an action movie with
a Gerard Butler type”) for the streamers. And for that
to be the same film. “They want films that they can run
comps on and, on the other hand, they want something
wildly original,” says Mimi Steinbauer, of Radiant Films
International. “I’m like: Pick a lane.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 10 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

The Report
entertained and simply not true.”
Behind the Headlines Bold says he’s in early talks with
a third agency. “The big three
have gotten bigger,” he says of the
agency landscape. “In order to be
competitive, the second tier has
The to scale. I reached out to several
Playlist competitors in the space and
expressed an interest in acquiring
Podcast and
audio news or merging.”
worth following When Bold and a management
team, CEO Robert Attermann and
president Brian Cho, bought the

The Battle to Be… agency then known as Abrams

Artists Agency from founder

Spotify’s Joe Rogan

Experience kept its
No. 4?! Agency Wars
lead as the most-
listened-to podcast
in the U.S. in Q3
and Q4 of 2022.
Audiochuck’s Crime
Junkie and The
New York Times’
Harry Abrams in 2018, it boasted
about 40 agents, says an A3
Hit a New Scale spokesperson, adding that the
agent complement is now about
84. For comparison, Verve has 52
The leader of A3 Artists Agency has sent letters of
agents and APA 170.
purchase inquiry to its peers — and says he is in talks
Bold declines to name the
with one — while multiple firms tout themselves as
third agency that A3 reached out
full-service rivals to the big three BY JONATHAN HANDEL
to regarding an acquisition, but

T
The Daily round out
the top three, per he closing of CAA’s closely One of the firms eyeing an says he met for lunch with its
Edison Research. watched megadeal for expansion is A3 Artists Agency, leadership and exploratory talks
rival ICM last June and which had its outside counsel continue. As to which agency that
the reverberations of the Writers send letters of purchase inquiry may be, many potential targets
Guild’s years-long standoff with to three of its rivals — Verve, APA — including Gersh, Paradigm,
agencies over packaging fees and an undisclosed agency — in Kaplan Stahler, Buchwald,
and affiliate productions have mid-January. A3 chairman Adam Innovative, Rothman Brecher,
reshaped Hollywood’s representa- Bold says the Bill Weinstein-led Culture Creative Entertainment
tion landscape. With only three Verve dismissed the offer to open and commercials agency Coast
majors left — CAA, Endeavor- discussions (Verve had no com- to Coast — did not reply to THR’s
owned WME and UTA — there’s ment), while APA president Jim request for comment.
Since the pandemic now a race among midsize firms Osbourne tells THR that “a sale to Bold says the acquisition
began, and amid an to become the de facto No. 4. anyone, much less A3, was never target would add to A3’s existing
ad downturn, new
series launches
have declined,
falling from
1 million-plus new
shows in 2020 to
730,000 in 2021 Why Wall Street Has Vastly Diverging Views About Roku
and 225,000 last
year, per podcast Analysts disagree on how long its flagship media player can stand out in a crowded streaming space
firm Listen Notes. amid an unpredictable ad market and now a lower-margin push into home TVs
BY CAITLIN HUSTON

D
espite ballooning operating losses
(nearly $250 million) and an advertis-
ing downturn, Roku’s stock soared
The Daniel Ek-led a day after it reported fourth-quarter earn-
Spotify is testing ings on Feb. 15. The rally came as the number
out a vertical-swipe of active users picked up to 70 million (from
homepage feed
61.3 million in Q1 2022) and the Anthony
similar to TikTok,
Bloomberg reports, Wood-led firm beat revenue expectations for
noting that the the quarter. Roku also promised to tighten
firm is aiming to expenses moving forward, with a plan to reach
preview the design positive adjusted earnings before interest,
tweak at its March 8
taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2024.
creator event in L.A.
— J. CLARA CHAN But, longer term, Wall Street’s view on the
stock remains mixed, depending on how much
belief there is that Roku can maintain its place
as a key gatekeeper in the streaming land-
scape with its media player. A team of analysts
at investment bank Evercore noted Feb. 16 that
Roku has an outsize exposure to the scatter
ad market (ad slots held back during upfront
sales), which has been pressured over the past
few months, and has not been able to benefit
Wood from political or sports ad spending, which
has helped other ad-based businesses.
Roku gave weaker-than-expected guidance
for the next quarter, but many analysts believe
the company is being conservative, with Wells
Fargo analyst Steven Cahall writing in a Feb. 16
note, somewhat optimistically, “The ad market
in Q1 sounds like it’s neither getting worse nor
better.” A Guggenheim research team led by
Michael Morris regarded Roku’s account base
as “valuable” but noted, “We struggle to value
the business given the inconsistency of results
relative to guidance and the cautionary macro-
economic tone cited by management.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 12 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 divisions — which include
digital/influencers, unscripted,
TV/motion-picture literary,
voiceover and Broadway — and
touts the diversity of A3’s employ-
ees and clients. Its roster includes
Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus),
Carl Weathers (The Mandalorian)
and former Writers Guild West
president David A. Goodman. Bold
says he expects to self-fund an
acquisition unless the deal size
merits bringing in investors.
But A3 is just one of multiple
midsize firms jostling for posi-
tion. On Feb. 16, APA (which
counts Yucaipa Companies mogul
Ron Burkle as an investor) inked
a strategic alliance with Europa
Content, a literary and produc-
tion label founded by Marc Gerald,
aimed at broadening its intellec-
tual-property and media rights
options. Said an APA spokesman,
“We have achieved our goal of
being the top full-service alterna-
tive to the big three.” The firm has
become a notable landing spot for
name-brand stars — including
Regina Hall, William H. Macy, John
Cusack and Donnie Yen — looking
to launch a second act.
And last September, the
Sam Gores-founded Paradigm
bought three talent firms —
Napoli Management, 3 Kings
Entertainment and Two Twelve
Management & Marketing —
expanding its reach to TV news
anchors and onscreen culinary
stars. (Billionaire Tom Gores, the
brother of Sam, took an owner-
ship stake in the agency in 2020.)
The agency business as a whole,
and particularly the revenue
models of the largest three or four
agencies, came under scrutiny
from the Writers Guild starting
in 2018, when the guild buttressed
its demands for an end to packag-
ing and affiliate production
by instructing its members to
part ways with their agents en
masse. At least 7,000 writers did
so in support of the guild’s ask
for a return to 10
percent-commission
business models.
Guild members
Bold maintained solidar-
ity in a campaign
that separated them from the
agents who would normally find
and/or negotiate their employ-
ment and script sales. (That same
solidarity may be on display again
this spring as WGA negotia-
tions with the studios approach
in advance of a May 1 contract
expiration and possible strike.)
The battle evolved into complex
litigation that seemed at times
to favor the agencies. But the
arrival of a global pandemic in
2020 dramatically weakened the
economics of the large agencies,
and the fortresses began to crack,
with the Writers Guild success-
fully signing small, then medium
and finally large agencies to its
desired agency agreement. (WME
and CAA both had to divest their
majority-ownership stakes in
affiliated production companies
to make a deal with the scribes.)
The fallout not only turned ICM
into an acquisition target — the
$750 million CAA-ICM deal built
a combined firm of around 3,200
employees led by CAA’s Bryan
Lourd, Richard Lovett and Kevin
Huvane — but also meant that
many writers who
had been signed with
larger agencies before
walking ended up
Osbourne moving to medium or
boutique shops while
waiting for the big guys to divest.
Some agents switched too; at least
12 decamped from ICM to APA
and others left for management
firms like Range Media, which
launched in 2020.
And as big as they are, even
the big three have been seeking
growth, the better to compete
with each other and stand toe-
to-toe with the largest studios as
well as the giant tech firms that
increasingly drive Hollywood.
The Ari Emanuel-run Endeavor
went public in 2021 (after a
failed attempt in 2019) and has
aggressively built a sports and
entertainment conglomerate in
addition to the representation
division led by WME and IMG.
Similarly, CAA’s majority owner,
private equity firm TPG, went
public in January 2022.
Meanwhile, fellow major UTA
has also been scaling up, acquir-
ing U.K. literary and talent agency
Curtis Brown Group and literary
agency Fletcher & Company and
taking an infusion of cash from
Swedish private equity firm EQT
to fuel growth. (UTA also under-
went its first notable round of
layoffs since 2020, disclosing on
Feb. 8 that it was cutting a single-
digit percentage of a workforce
that totals 2,000 employees.)
And not to be ignored is the
state of the entertainment busi-
ness itself. With streamers and
studios in cost-cutting mode and
the likelihood of a writers strike
increasing against a backdrop of
challenges to theatergoing and
linear TV, it has become harder
to be a seller. These macro-shifts
have led midsize agencies to
explore M&A as a bulwark for
stability in a turbulent business
— and find ways to sign new, and
more, clients.

The positives for Roku going forward
include the company’s plan to moderate
expense growth (a plan that only those bull-
ish on the stock believe in), the fact that Roku
Channel is seeing increasing engagement
PIVOTAL
(with streaming hours up more than 85 per-
cent from the prior year) and its shoppable
advertising partnership with Walmart. Also
PODCAST: COURTESY. EK: DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR SPOTIFY. OSBOURNE: SARAH GOLONKA. BOLD: STEFANIE
The Roku Stock Price Dartboard streaming companies. The stock had been
While its stock closed at $71.53 artificially propped up by the streaming
on Feb. 17, finance experts widely disagree wars, these experts argue, which led all the
about an ideal target price in the near term major media giants to spend on content and
marketing in pursuit of subscriber num-
WELLS FARGO
bers. This benefited Roku’s platform and
EVERCORE advertising business. But now, the tides have
turned as companies such as Disney, Warner

$55
a plus is the company’s hiring of three new $67 Bros. Discovery and AMC Networks look to
executives last fall, including former CEO cut spending.
KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR GO CAMPAIGN. WOOD: DIA DIPASUPIL/GETTY IMAGES FOR TRIBECA FESTIVAL.

of Fox Entertainment Charlie Collier, who is
now leading Roku’s ad and content business
and is known for doing more with less. “We
believe Roku can leverage its advantages in
pricing and merchandising to remain the
market leader in consumer-facing connected
television solutions,” wrote a team of analysts
at investment bank Oppenheimer, which is
relatively bullish on the firm for Wall Street.
But taking a decidedly downbeat view
on the stock, MoffettNathanson analysts
forecast Feb. 16 that Roku may be negatively
impacted by the larger pressures facing
$80 Roku’s latest revenue push takes it away
from those pressures, as the company
$85 $38 unveiled plans in January to manufac-
ture its own branded TV sets. However,
MoffettNathanson analysts see the plan to
$70 manufacture, rather than continuing to part-
ner with outside companies, as weighing on
the profit margins. Pivotal Research Group’s
Jeffrey Wlodarczak also expressed “serious
OPPENHEIMER
reservations” about the company’s move into
BANK OF AMERICA MOFFETTNATHANSON home devices, adding: “The bottom line is
MACQUARIE that the outlook remains choppy for Roku
Source: Wall Street analyst research notes going forward.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 13 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 The Report

Awards

FEINBERG FORECAST

Heading in to Final Voting for the Oscars

THR’s awards expert examines how the DGA and BAFTA awards have shaken things up in the race BY SCOTT FEINBERG

BEST BEST BEST SUPPORTING BEST SUPPORTING BEST DOCUMENTARY BEST PRODUCTION
PICTURE DIRECTOR ACTOR ACTRESS FEATURE DESIGN

All Quiet on the
Western Front
Netflix’s German-
language World War I
drama way outper-
formed expectations
at the BAFTA Awards
on Feb. 19, win-
ning seven prizes,
including best film,
director (Edward
Berger) and best
adapted screenplay.
Daniel Scheinert
and Daniel Kwan
Everything Everywhere
All at Once
On Feb. 18, the duo
known as Daniels won
the top Directors Guild
Award over the likes of
Steven Spielberg. The
DGA Award has pre-
dicted the best director
Oscar on all but eight of
74 previous occasions.
Barry Keoghan
The Banshees
of Inisherin
The Irish 30-year-old
first-time Oscar nomi-
nee received a big boost
when BAFTA chose
him over Banshees
co-star Brendan
Gleeson and heavy
favorite Ke Huy Quan
(Everything Everywhere
All at Once).
QUIET: REINER BAJO/NETFLIX. KWAN: STEVE GRANITZ/FILMMAGIC. BANSHEES: COURTESY OF SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
(2). NAVALNY: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES. BABYLON: SCOTT GARFIELD/PARAMOUNT PICTURES.
Kerry Condon Navalny Babylon
The Banshees Daniel Roher’s portrait Florencia Martin and
of Inisherin of a Russian resis- Anthony Carlino’s work
The sole female tance leader won this won this category’s
performer among category’s BAFTA BAFTA Award over
her film’s principal Award over fellow Oscar three fellow Oscar nom-
cast was named this nominees All That inees and was awarded
category’s winner — Breathes, All the Beauty best period work at
after Carey Mulligan’s and the Bloodshed the Art Directors Guild
(She Said) name and Fire of Love (that Awards on Feb. 18. The
was accidentally film’s Sara Dosa won latter’s winner has won
announced first — at the best documentary the Oscar in three of the
the BAFTA Awards. DGA Award). past five years.

Dodge College of
Film & Media Arts
DIRECTING PROFESSOR
Chapman University seeks applications for a full-time, non-tenure track
faculty position in directing for its nationally recognized Dodge College of
Film and Media Arts beginning August 2023.

;Yf\a\l]kk`gmd\hgkk]kkYl]jeafYd\]_j]] E>9gjH`<!afÚdehjg\m[%
tion or a related discipline or commensurate industry experience and a

THE FIRST STOP

ZjgY\cfgod]\_]g^Úde`aklgjqYf\Y]kl`]la[l`]gjq&

ImYdaÚ]\ Yhhda[Yflk Yj] j]imaj]\ lg kmZeal Yf Yhhda[Ylagf lg 9[Y\]ea[

FOR FILM
Jobs Online: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/23342

=fimaja]kk`gmd\Z]\aj][l]\lg>LNk]Yj[`8[`YheYf&]\m&Mk]
>ade
Production - Directing” as the email subject.

KYdYjqoaddZ][gee]fkmjYl]oal`imYdaÚ[Ylagfkoal`YjYf_]g^1-$(((%
)(-$(((&L`akhgkalagfak[gflaf_]flgfÚfYdZm\_]lYhhjgnYd&Km[[]kk^md
[gehd]lagfg^YZY[c_jgmf\[`][cakj]imaj]\^gjl`]ÚfYd[Yf\a\Yl]&
Some
stories
you have
to hear to Podcast of the Year Nomination:

believe.
30 for 30 Podcasts’ Pink Card
Best Sports Podcast Nomination:
30 for 30 Podcasts’ Pink Card

ESPN thanks the Ambies Nominating Committee

for recognizing 30 for 30 Podcasts’ Pink Card and
The Longest Game.

Best Sports Podcast Nomination:

30 for 30 Podcasts’ The Longest Game
 The Report

7 Days of DEALS
Who’s inking on the dotted line this week

JA MES DOLA N ‘OPEN TO ALL IDEAS’

FOR A MC: SELL VS. STAY THE COU RSE
Under the leadership of Josh Sapan, AMC Networks services. Wells Fargo’s Steven Cahall is bearish on
What’s steered through a rocky pandemic era by charting the firm, noting that AMC “has a smaller budget vs. Regina
the its course as a boutique streaming service provider, its peers” while still not being able to “re-create its Hall
Deal? offering niche-oriented AMC+, Acorn TV, Allblk and linear earnings in streaming given the much higher
Shudder and zigging while major entertainment churn around premium content.”
giants zagged to chase Netflix’s scale. And Dolan himself is open to a merger or a deal.
Now, with Sapan retired as CEO, executive chair- “Our first concern is always going to be creating
man James Dolan has put forth a cost-cutting plan value for our shareholders,” he said during a Feb. 17
emphasizing $423 million in restructuring costs earnings call. “So what form that comes in could
Dolan as his wife, veteran Cablevision exec Kristin Dolan, be stay the course, it could be M&A, you know, a
takes charge as CEO. The firm has seen job cuts strategic transaction. Very honestly, we’re very
across all its divisions after AMC’s most watched much open to all of those ideas.” He added that AMC
show, The Walking Dead, wrapped its run. And its Networks was likely to remain on its own in the
boutique direct-to-consumer bet now stands at short term. — ETAN VLESSING
11.8 million paid subscribers across all its brands.
There’s good news: Overall revenue in Q4 jumped AMC’s Niche Streaming Bet
20 percent to $965 million, compared with a year- The combined subs of its indie channels compares FILM
earlier $803.7 million. That beat an overall revenue with rival Starz’s OTT-only subs (11.6 million) but Regina Hall (APA) is set
expectation of $947.8 million, per a Refinitiv trails Peacock’s (20 million)
to star in and produce hor-
consensus. But severance and other personnel costs
12M ror comedy Breitenbush,
came to $45.2 million. And, amid an advertising 11.8M
11 11.1M Q4 which has been acquired
slump, AMC reported ad sales fell 12 percent to 10.8M
Q2 Q3 by Yale Entertainment. Jim
$206 million on lower linear TV ratings, softer ad 10
9.5M Strouse is directing from
sales and fewer original TV episodes. The company 9 Q1 his original screenplay.
is seeking to tap global market sales for at least 8 9M
three Walking Dead spinoffs in the works featuring 7 6M Q4
M. Night Shyamalan
the franchise’s most beloved stars, but those future 6 Q4 (Range) and his Blinding
revenue sales aren’t expected to fully offset reduced
2020 2021 2022 2022 2022 2022 Edge Pictures left Universal
ad interest in AMC’s myriad cable and streaming
Source: Company filings, includes subs for AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and Allblk to sign a multiyear, first-
look deal with Warner Bros.

DOLAN: BOBBY BANK/GETTY IMAGES. HALL: GILBERT FLORES/VARIETY VIA GETTY IMAGES. ’90S: PATRICK WYMORE/NETFLIX. LAUGHTER: COURTESY OF HARPERCOLLINS. JONES:
Ishana Night Shyamalan
Inside
That ’90s Show Is Da Bomb

GREGG DEGUIRE/FILMMAGIC. HOME: COURTESY OF BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOME SERVICES. SHYAMALAN: DIMITRIOS KAMBOURIS/GETTY IMAGES. WAYUHI: JOSUE RIVAS.
View (Range), M. Night’s daugh-
1.59B viewers
ter, will direct her first
NETFLIX 10 episodes feature, The Watchers, for
Netflix’s sequel to That ’70s Show grabbed a lot of viewing time New Line with a June 2024
in the U.S. during its premiere week — and made up the major- release date.
ity of its global viewing. Per Nielsen, the 10-episode comedy had
1.59 billion minutes of viewing for its first week, which works out Patrick Dempsey (UTA)
to 26.5 million hours. Netflix’s own rankings put That ’90s Show is in talks to star in
at 41.08 million hours worldwide for the week. The two companies Spyglass’ slasher horror
use different methodologies to compile their stats, but it’s safe to movie Thanksgiving from
say that U.S. viewers made up more than half the global audience director Eli Roth.
for the show, which earned a season-two renewal. — RICK PORTER
Jordana Brewster (CAA),
Scott Speedman (CAA)
and Laurence Fishburne

Rights Available! Hot new books with Hollywood appeal BY SEIJA RANKIN

The Laughter (HARPERVIA, FEB. 14)
BY Sonora Jha AGENCY HG Literary
The author’s third book is a campus novel for our highly
reactionary times: A tenured (white male) professor finds his
outdated beliefs challenged when a new colleague — a Pakistani
Muslim law professor — sets off a live-wire chain of events.
Gone Like Yesterday (TINY REPARATIONS, FEB. 14)
BY Janelle M. Williams AGENCY GB Agency
Inspired by a generation’s worth of Black musicians, the latest
novel from Phoebe Robinson’s imprint follows two women in
New York who can hear the music of gypsy moths as they attempt
to solve a desperate familial mystery.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 16 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 $
575M
Big
Paramount Global’s quarterly
streaming losses, up from $502M
Number in the year-ago period, as it hit
77 million subscribers for its services.

Holden Jones
(CAA) will star in Lionsgate
thriller The Offer, from
director Vaughn Stein.
Universal nabbed rights to
Too Dead to Die, a graphic
novel from Arrow-verse
scribe Marc Guggenheim
(CAA) and artist
Howard Chaykin.
Simon Rex (Buchwald) has
joined Tim Blake Nelson
(UTA) and Vera Farmiga
(CAA) in Heaven’s Gate
cult biopic film The Leader,
from writer-director
Michael Gallagher.
Alicia Silverstone
(UTA) joined Nick Frost
(Independent Talent)
and Kevin Connolly (APA)
in dark comedy Krazy
House from writer-director
duo Steffen Haars and
Flip van der Kuil.
M. Night Shyamalan
Gael García Bernal (WME),
Renate Reinsve (CAA) and
Bérénice Bejo (UTA) are
set to star in sci-fi drama
Another End, from writer-
director Piero Messina.
Nick Offerman (UTA),
Jacob Tremblay (UTA)
and Dennis Quaid (UTA)
will star in crime thriller
Sovereign, which marks the
feature directorial debut of
Christian Swegal.
Searchlight acquired the
Jonathan Majors-starring
(WME) body-building fea-
ture Magazine Dreams.
DIGITAL/TV
Zach Galifianakis (UTA)
has closed a deal to star in
Lilo & Stitch, Disney+’s live-
action remake of its 2002
animated movie from Dean
Fleischer Camp.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s Palisades home sits on an acre.
Rachel Hilson (CAA) and
Josh Holloway (UTA)
will star in 1970s-set
drama Duster for HBO
Max and exec produc-
ers J.J. Abrams and
LaToya Morgan.
Curtis “50 Cent”
Jackson (APA) and his
G-Unit Film & Television
company signed a nonex-
clusive broadcast direct
deal with Fox.
The Resident co-creator
Amy Holden Jones (WME)
and Burn Notice creator
Matt Nix (WME) are devel-
oping the buddy-cop drama
Archie & Pete at Fox.
Sam Sklaver (WME)
and Elizabeth Peterson
are developing a
female Starsky & Hutch
update at Fox.
Mobeen Azhar will
produce an eight-part
docuseries and podcast for
the BBC with the work-
ing title We Need to Talk
About Kanye.
RENEWED/CANCELED
Netflix renewed Outer
Banks, starring Chase
Stokes and Madelyn Cline,
for season four.
Peacock renewed the
mystery series Poker Face,
created by Rian Johnson
and starring Natasha
Lyonne, for season two.
Disney+ ended the
two-season runs of
The Mighty Ducks: Game
Changers, showrun by
Josh Goldsmith and Cathy
Yuspa, and Big Shot, from
David E. Kelley, Dean
Lorey and Brad Garrett.
Warner Bros. canceled the
syndicated shows Judge
Mathis, featuring Greg
Mathis, and The People’s
Court, starring Marilyn
Milian, after seasons 24
and 26, respectively.
REAL ESTATE
Jennifer Lopez and Ben
Affleck reportedly bought
a 15,100-square-foot,
seven-bedroom Pacific
Palisades mansion that had
been listed at $34.5 million.
Anna Kendrick has listed
a 2,764-square-foot,
three-bedroom house in
Beachwood Canyon to rent
for $12,950 per month.
Scream producer
Andrew Rona listed a
four-bedroom Birds Streets
house for $5.5 million.
— COMPILED BY ERIK HAYDEN
Rep
Sheet
CAA signed Reservation
Dogs composer Mato
Wayuhi, actress-artist
Kristina Wong, Joyland
director Saim Sadiq
and reality TV star
Kristin Cavallari.
UTA landed Dana
Carvey, King Richard
actor Josiah Cross
and Twitch streamer
Kai Cenat.
WME inked All That
Breathes doc director
Shaunak Sen and
the web3 gaming com-
pany Overlord, founded
by Joe Carnell and
Dom Smith.

Stories from the

world of medicine
CREATED BY DR. EMILY SILVERMAN

2023 AMBIE AWARD NOMINEE

Best Indie Podcast

WINNER WINNER
Anthem Award Sharp Index Award
for Media Leadership

2023 2023

WINNER WINNER
Digital Health Quill Podcast
Award Award
2022 2022

HONOREE
Webby Award
2021
PERSON OF INTER EST

Nat Wolff
Starring in Prime Video’s
The Consultant, the former
child star is growing up
for good By Seija Rankin

at Wolff has been really

N famous a couple of
times. The first was in
2007, when his show The
Naked Brothers Band (based on his
real-life musical group) became
Nickelodeon’s most popular kids’
series — that was the kind of fame
that got him bullied at his New
York City middle school. Then, in
2015, he led Paper Towns, the big-
screen adaptation of John Green’s
blockbuster YA novel — that
was the screaming-teen-girls-
following-you-on-a-global-press-
tour variety.
Now he’s preparing for the
release of a series that features his
first starring TV role — and a run
alongside Parker Posey and Hari
Nef in an off-Broadway adapta-
tion of The Seagull/Woodstock, NY
— and feeling further from those
days than ever. “A couple of girls
followed me home from rehears-
als the other day, and it made me
realize I barely think about being
a child star,” says the 28-year-old
over late-morning shrimp tacos
in Times Square. “I was really
insulated by fame as a kid, but I’ve
reached a point where I just don’t
care about that at all.”
It’s an impressively Zen attitude
for someone who has been sur-
rounded by the chaos of celebrity
— he’s shared IMDb credits with
everyone from Selena Gomez
and Reese Witherspoon to Robert
De Niro — for most of his life.
It’s due in part to a very good
therapist and the pandemic, which
forced him to step away from the
anxiety-inducing habit of fixat-
ing on his career, but credit must
also go to his time on the set of The “I’m just starting to make some
money and I’m realizing, ‘Wow,
Consultant. The Prime Video show, I don’t know anything about
this part.’ I grew up with parents
who are artistically brilliant
but, in a way that is really
inspiring, they are not business
people,” says Nat Wolff.
 which drops Feb. 24, is a dark
workplace comedy about a gaming
startup that’s taken over by a cor-
porate overlord (Christoph Waltz)
who’s hellbent on testing the
allegiance of employees (including
Wolff and The White Lotus’ Brittany
O’Grady). It’s meant to raise ques-
tions of power and autonomy, and
Wolff learned to think about the
ways the entertainment industry
tests actors’ morality and ethics,
and to fight off some of his people-
pleasing nature.
The Consultant was the first
project in a long time that
Wolff felt desperate to be part
of, despite a learned hesitancy
toward expectations: “Sometimes
you’re on the fence about [what
could] end up being great experi-
ences, and sometimes a project
you’re excited about is not good
at all.” He won’t give an example
by name, but offers an easily
googleable anecdote. “I did a
T documentary about traffic, grief and
movie with Selena Gomez when
I was 16 that has a 0 percent on
Rotten Tomatoes,” he says. “I now
consider it a badge of honor; it’s
actually hard to have every person
in the world have the same low
opinion.” (It’s Behaving Badly, and
the audience score is 29 percent.)
Wolff with Brittany O’Grady in The Consultant.
WOLFF: EMILY SOTO/TRUNK ARCHIVE. CONSULTANT: MICHAEL DESMOND/AMAZON STUDIOS. HIGHWAY, SHANE: COURTESY OF SUBJECT (3).
These days, Wolff tries to stay
out of online discourse entirely
for fear of letting it permeate his
hard-won good vibes. He doesn’t
read reviews — even praise from
critics makes him feel a little
ill — and has disabled Safari on
his phone to avoid stumbling
onto something he doesn’t want
to see. But that doesn’t mean he
isn’t self-aware. He knows people
are going to read this profile;
when he orders a coffee for a
pick-me-up during an exhausting
work schedule, he notes that his
typical aversion to the beverage is
well known enough that if I write
about his order, he’ll “probably
get calls from ex-girlfriends.”
Eventually, the discourse will
find you.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Doc Spotlights Tragic Toll
of Pacific Coast Highway
Producer Michel Shane — whose daughter was killed at age 13 by a speeding
driver — has spearheaded a film looking at the causes and potential
solutions to a long string of fatalities on the Malibu stretch of that road
By Gary Baum
he new film 21 Miles in Malibu — a
bureaucratic inertia — premiered Feb. 16
at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
It centers on the film’s producer, Michel Shane
(Catch Me If You Can; I, Robot), his wife, Ellen,
and their daughter Emily, who was fatally struck
at age 13 by a driver in 2010 while walking along
Pacific Coast Highway.
The man who killed Emily — Sina
Khankhanian, found to be speeding for miles
before colliding with her — is now in prison for
second-degree murder.
The 56-minute film by Nic Davis (who directed
the 2019 music documentary Enormous: The
Gorge Story) explores the evolution, dynamics,
paradoxes and, most crucially, dangers of PCH,
which serves as the key conduit for the resi-
dents of the ultra-affluent, world-famous town
(Malibu’s population is just over 10,000, accord-
ing to the most recent U.S. Census), as well as for
the throngs who increasingly visit on weekends,
holidays and summer days. The road’s long his-
tory of death and destruction has brought about
a local nickname, Blood Alley, as well as count-
less government-funded studies and perpetual
questions about why more hasn’t been done to
increase safety.
Shane’s personal frustration fueled his work
on the project. “I’m not really a political animal —
I’m a filmmaker,” he says. “The best way for me
to express the outrage, to get the message out,
was visually.”
Shane has his own suggestions for how to
address the crisis. They include vastly increasing
the cost of traffic tickets to dissuade speeding
and building a couple of city-owned garages in
Malibu catering to visitors, so they are less likely
to park and exit their vehicles along PCH.
But mainly he’d just like to see Caltrans, the
state’s transportation agency responsible for
the roadway, simply carry out the many prosaic
19 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
A still from the new documentary 21 Miles in Malibu,
showing a crash on Pacific Coast Highway.
fixes that its consultants have long suggested,
from adjusted lane markings and clearer signage
to better synchronization in streetlight sys-
tems. “They spend a whole bunch of money
doing studies, and then there’s little change
implemented,” he says.
The roadway is the site of hundreds of vehicle-
related collisions each year. California Highway
Patrol data for the 21 miles of PCH that fall within
the city’s limits shows 49 fatalities between 2012
and 2022, citing such causes as distraction on the
part of drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians, as well
as speeding and intoxication.
This being Malibu, occasionally the deadly
incidents involve famous figures, prompting brief
waves of outcry and recrimination about what
needs to be done. In 2015, a driver in a pickup
truck slammed into the parked car of rapper
MC Supreme, aka Dewayne Coleman; he was
pronounced dead at the scene. The same year,
Caitlyn Jenner initiated a multivehicle collision
that resulted in the death of another motorist.
(Jenner wasn’t charged.)
“When someone that’s high-profile is involved,
[the issue] gets the attention that’s necessary,”
Shane observes. “Then everything else, you’re
just one of the statistics. It’s brutal.”
From left: 21 Miles in Malibu producer Michel Shane in a
family photo with his daughter Emily, taken when she
was 5 years old; in 2015, a new street sign at Heathercliff
Road was unveiled as a memorial to Emily.

“I can’t get slapped
— I cry a lot.”
JIMMY KIMMEL
The late night host, in a
promotional spot for the Oscars,
joking about his upcoming
gig to host the awards show,
in reference to last year’s
Will Smith slap controversy.
“By far our biggest
lever to manage
spending is to focus
on franchises.”
BOB BAKISH
The Paramount Global CEO,
on a Feb. 16 earnings call, saying
that 2023 will be the peak
investment year for streaming.
FLASHBACK!
Did I
Really
Say
That?
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
About Town
Yes, I Did Say That! Quotes
A look at who’s saying what in entertainment
Compiled by Sydney Odman
“Nothing is more “Sex, drugs and
rock ’n’ roll
diverse than the fact is hard to do in
a pandemic.”
that the ‘big bad’ LAUREN NEUSTADTER
of the MCU is a young The Hello Sunshine exec,
to the Los Angeles Times, on
the struggle of filming the
Black boy from Texas.” Amazon miniseries Daisy Jones
& the Six during a period of
JONATHAN MAJORS COVID-19 precautions, because
The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania star, to Ebony, several concert scenes
on taking on the role of the next major villain, required hundreds of extras
Kang the Conqueror, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. and no social distancing.
“I’m sorry
“People don’t know that I said it.”
what you’re capable DON LEMON
The anchor, in an editorial
of until they see what staff meeting, apologizing for
you’re capable of.” saying on CNN This Morning
KEKE PALMER that Republican presidential
The Nope actress, to Vanity Fair, candidate Nikki Haley, 51, is no
on the way her lead role in the Jordan longer in her prime. He also
Peele horror flick changed how said that women are
people in the industry view her. “considered to be in [their]
prime in [their] 20s and 30s,
MAJORS: ROY ROCHLIN/WIREIMAGE. PALMER: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES FOR AFI. BAKISH: ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES. HILTON: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC. CARLSON: JASON KOERNER/GETTY IMAGES.
maybe 40s.”
“I really started “I was known as a
to pack on sex symbol, but
some pounds.” anything sexual
AUSTIN BUTLER terrified me.”
The Elvis star, to Variety, on his food
regimen to gain weight for the role, PARIS HILTON
which included eating doughnuts and The reality TV star, to Harper’s
drinking microwaved ice cream. Bazaar, revealing that she
Butler ultimately ended up wearing thought she was asexual in the
a prosthetic body suit. early days of her career.
NOV. 18, 2020
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way.
I caught her. It’s insane.”
TUCKER CARLSON
The Fox News host, in a text to colleague Laura Ingraham about one of Donald Trump’s
attorneys who claimed that the 2020 election was rigged. The text and others were released as
part of the $1.6 billion defamation case Dominion Voting Systems has filed against the network.
20 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
 About Town

Heard Around Hollywood

greeting that included five min-

utes of applause.
Power
Dining
Christine Quinn Is Ready to Act Jennifer Lopez and
Again — Like Lady Gaga Vergara Ben Affleck had a
Christine Quinn, best known as night out at Giorgio
Baldi. … Sofía Vergara
the drama-stirring real estate and Joe Manganiello
agent on the first five seasons dined at Avra Beverly
Abruptly canceled projects (from left) Westworld, Batgirl and Arrested Development. of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, bid Hills. … Chase Stokes,
adieu to the reality series last Grazer Madelyn Cline and co-
year. When THR caught up with showrunner Shannon

Rambling Reporter her recently in Santa Monica,

Quinn said the exit freed her up
Burke had a post-
premiere celebration
for season three of
By Chris Gardner
to return to her roots. “I’m acting Outer Banks at Baltaire.
on a show right now,” she teased, … Brian Grazer broke
Insiders Respond to Streamers Pulling Projects: ‘It’s Horrifying’ declining to name the project. bread at Carnival
Restaurant in Sherman
Creatives are burning with rage over Hollywood’s hottest new trend: “I started out acting in scripted Oaks. … In New York,
streaming platforms’ habit of canceling finished films and TV series and I really wanted to get back Strand Releasing co-
before they’ve aired or pulling projects from platforms and shelving into it.” She even name-checked a founder Marcus Hu
them indefinitely. THR has been asking around town about the effects certain A-lister whose career she celebrated his birthday
of consolidation, budget cuts and tax write-offs kneecapping mega- wants to emulate. “I’m not say- at The Odeon with
John Waters, James
projects like Batgirl, Snowpiercer, Westworld and, more recently, Arrested ing I am Lady Gaga, but the fact Schamus, producer
Development. “It’s been horrifying,” prolific creator Rian Johnson (Glass that she can do these really big Christine Vachon,
Onion) tells THR. “The fact that it’s becoming common practice is terri- roles and pull it off, whether it’s Cinetic’s Ryan Werner,
ble and adds to the awfulness.” But Johnson makes a case for optimism: American Horror Story or A Star artist Cindy Sherman
“All you can do as someone who makes stuff is ultimately put your faith Is Born, I want to do things like and MoMA film curator
Rajendra Roy.
in the notion that if you make something, it’s going to find its audience.” that,” said Quinn, whose credits
Jerry Bruckheimer agrees: “It’s always about the work, and if the work’s include Hot Tub Time Machine and
good, it’ll be on the air. That’s how it works. We all have had movies that Sasq-Watch. — DEGEN PENER
don’t quite work sometimes, and hopefully the movies that they pull
will get out there somewhere, on some platform, in the future.”

Hero’s Welcome at City for a meeting with Christine

Quinn
CAA for Tom Cruise his CAA agents, a roster
Tom Cruise had quite the that includes Kevin
week. First, he stopped Huvane, Joel Lubin
by the Oscar nomi- and Maha Dakhil, the HOT NEW
nees luncheon, where latter of whom posted RESTAURANT

WESTWORLD: COURTESY OF HBO. BATGIRL: LESLIE GRACE/TWITTER. ARRESTED: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. CRUISE, GRAZER: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. QUINN:
THR’s Scott Feinberg a pic of the meeting on Leona’s
reported that the Top Instagram, writing, Sushi House

SYDNEY JACKSON/BFA.COM. VERGARA: AMY SUSSMAN/GETTY IMAGES. LEONA’S: COURTESY OF RESTAURANT. ZHAO: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES.
Tom Cruise (left) with The Quick Pitch
Gun: Maverick star and Jerry Bruckheimer. “Office visit from the
producer “was swarmed man who brought us A Japanese-Peruvian
flagship in Studio City
by virtually everyone.” That back to the theaters.” THR learned from legendary res-
included Steven Spielberg, who that CAA employees surprised taurateur Frank Leon,
gushed about Top Gun’s success, Cruise by leaving their offices and actor and entrepre-
saying, “You saved Hollywood’s gathering in the lobby and along neur Evan Ross, and
ass.” Then it was over to Century the stairwells on every floor for a Michelin-star sushi chef
Shigenori Fujimoto,
the restaurant offers
elevated options like
spicy seafood miso
soup, albacore with
shishito peppers and
Red Carpet The Directors Guild of America revealed its winners for the
2023 DGA Awards at the Beverly Hilton on Feb. 18, with
yuzu sauce, and clas-
sics like nigiri, sashimi
Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan taking home the top prize for Everything Everywhere and hand rolls. There is
All at Once. “This has been an incredible year for our little film that somehow keeps also a special omakase
going,” Kwan told the crowd, noting they wouldn’t be anywhere without star Michelle menu handpicked by
Yeoh or studio A24. Scheinert thanked Kwan for “putting up with me when I asked to the chef and a kushi-
make our movie weirder, and thank you for making our movie so much braver and more yaki (robata) menu
vulnerable,” adding, “Holy shit, this is crazy!” Also among the night’s big winners were starting at 10 p.m.
Daniel Kwan (left) and Daniel Scheinert with
presenter Chloé Zhao after taking home the Barry’s Bill Hader for comedy series, Euphoria’s Sam Levinson for dramatic series and 11814 Ventura Blvd.
DGA Awards’ top honor. Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells for first-time theatrical feature film director. — KIRSTEN CHUBA — EVAN NICOLE BROWN

Got tips? Email rambling@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 22 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 About Town

2 Mileposts

Dave Hollis, former

president of world-
wide distribution
at The Walt Disney
Co., died Feb. 11 in
Dripping Springs,
Texas. He was 47.

Tom Luddy, the

co-founder and long-
3 time artistic director
of the Telluride
Film Festival, died
Feb. 13 in Berkeley,
1 Taylor
Hasselhoff California. He was 79.
and Madison
Fiore
2 Felix Tim McCarver, the
Erhardt
Barnett All-Star catcher and
1
3 Raquel Hall of Fame broad-
Welch
caster, died Feb. 16 in
Memphis, Tennessee.
Hitched, Hatched, Hired He was 81.

Inside the industry’s celebrations and news

James Flynn, a pro-

HASSELHOFF: TAYLOR HASSELHOFF AND MADISON FIORE. BARNETT: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. WELCH: GREGG DEGUIRE/WIREIMAGE. DOLAN: COURTESY OF AMC. SHYNGLE: COURTESY OF SUGAR23. KALUUYA: TIM P. WHITBY/GETTY IMAGES FOR UNIVERSAL.
ducer on The Banshees
Weddings executive vp, head WME upped executive creative Richard Belzer, the of Inisherin, died
Taylor Hasselhoff, of physical produc- Chandler Atterberry, director Feb. 6. stand-up comedian Feb. 11 in Dublin of
a luxury L.A. real tion Feb. 16. Julia Colares, Dahbin who played Det. John an unknown cause.
estate agent with the Han, Zachary Jayson, Pamela L. Kunath was Munch on Homicide: He was 57.
Aaron Kirman Group Jason Miller was Alexa Sternschein tapped co-president Life on the Street
and daughter of David hired as GM of the and Nat Wyatt to of Constantin Film and Law & Order: Andrew Freedman,
Hasselhoff, married North East division agent Feb. 15. Development, effec- SVU, died Feb. 19 a publicist whose
strategist Madison of live entertainment tive March 1. in Bozouls, France. clients included
Fiore on Feb. 4 at promoter Outback He was 78. Gayle King and Joan
Ethereal Gardens Presents on Feb. 15. Deaths Collins, died Feb. 8 of
in Escondido, Raquel Welch, who Stella Stevens, cancer in New York.
California. NBCUniversal pro- turned a doeskin who brought sweet He was 67.
moted Tammy Filler bikini in One Million sexiness to such
Births and Jamie Cutburth Years B.C. into one films as The Nutty Gerald Fried, who
Writer-actor Luke to executive vp in Dolan of the most iconic Professor and The created music for Star
Barnett and teacher the advertising and cinematic images Ballad of Cable Hogue, Trek and Roots, died
Emily Barnett partnership group Kristin Dolan was of the 1960s, died died Feb. 17 in L.A. of Feb. 17 in Bridgeport,
welcomed son Felix and Jenny Depper named CEO of AMC Feb. 15 in Los Alzheimer’s compli- Connecticut.
Erhardt Barnett on to senior vp E! News Networks on Feb. 15. Angeles. She was 82. cations. She was 84. He was 95.
Dec. 26 at Cedars- Digital on Feb. 16.
Sinai Tarzana. Dean Devlin’s Electric
Entertainment
Congrats hired Brandon W.
Former Twitter Lambdin as vp physi- Birthdays
exec Briana McElroy cal production and
was named head of upped Mark Franco to FEB. 22 FEB. 25
worldwide digital head of production Drew Barrymore, 48 Chelsea Handler, 48
Julie Walters, 73 Jameela Jamil, 37
marketing for the Shyngle and Cynthia Hajj to Rashida Jones, 47
Lionsgate Motion production execu- FEB. 23
Noah Jupe, 18
Emily Blunt, 40
Picture Group Sugar23 named tive Feb. 16.
Dakota Fanning, 29 FEB. 26
on Feb. 16. Tony Shyngle CFO Niecy Nash, 53 Michael Bolton, 70
and Kristian Talebi OkayMedia hired
FEB. 24 FEB. 27
Steven Johnson director of financial Geo Hagan as Kristin Davis, 58 Ziwe Fumudoh, 31
joined Alcon planning and analy- editor-in-chief and O’Shea Jackson Jr., 32 Josh Groban, 42
Entertainment as sis Feb. 13. Anayka Pomare as Daniel Kaluuya, 34 → Kate Mara, 40

To submit, send email to hhh@thr.com

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 24 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 The Business Creative Space

Ike
Barinholtz
The comedy workhorse
on his Celebrity Jeopardy!
win, making Mel Brooks Posing with his
trophy, Barinholtz
laugh and Hollywood’s will defend his
biggest problems right title on Jeopardy!
Tournament of
now: ‘If you’re able to get Champions this
a movie made in 2023, fall. “I’m going to
get destroyed,”
you’re a superhero’ he says.
By Lacey Rose

M
ake sure you put the
things that will get me
canceled right up in the
headline,” Ike Barinholtz jokes in
early February as I leave the Los
Angeles home he shares with his
wife and three daughters.
We’ve just spent the past hour-
plus talking about everything
from casting to cancel culture in
the guest house he’s converted
into his office. The space is an
homage to comedy, though mixed
in with his books and posters sits
his latest, crowning achievement:
the trophy he has recently won as
a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy!
As Barinholtz explains, he keeps
it just behind his desk chair so it’s
firmly in view whenever he’s on
Zoom. “That way if someone dis-
agrees with me, I can just swing
around and tap it,” he says with a
big, goofy laugh.
The former Mindy Project
writer-star is even busier than
usual these days, with three
of his many active projects —
Hulu’s History of the World: Part changed the perception of you, You got your start in improv. Ike Barinholtz was photographed Feb. 7
at his home office in Los Angeles.
II, HBO’s White House Plumbers either Hollywood’s or your fans’? Do you still dabble in that world or
and the indie film Maximum The people who know me were is it a young man’s game? check yourself. We’re not running
Truth — rolling out in the com- not surprised because I’m a trivia It’s definitely a young man’s game, around being like, “We’re truth-
ing months. The 46-year-old freak — just an endless source but I just did an improv show. My tellers.” We’re just like trying to
Chicago native talks candidly of useless knowledge. But a lot of first in ages. The last few years make people laugh. Now, could I do
about the increasingly “distress- characters I’ve played are, oh, I have not been good for improv. I it constantly? No. A friend of mine
ing” state of the industry and the don’t want to say stupid, but I can’t don’t know who’s running these asked me, “Will you do my show? It
challenges of making comedy in imagine they would do well on places. I feel like they’re all weird starts at 9:30.” And I’m like, “Bro,
the year 2023. Jeopardy!, right? So, I think there VC folks, like everything else in I’m hitting REM sleep by then.”
were people who were probably this country. I also think that
So, you just won Celebrity like, “Oh wow, that guy’s not actu- improv gets shit on, especially by Mad TV was your big break, and
Jeopardy! Do you think it’s ally a complete moron!” (Laughs.) the fucking stand-ups. It’s like, yet I’ve heard you say the few

Photographed by Birdie Thompson

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 26 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 He’s working
with Mel
Brooks on
an update of
Brooks’ 1981
film, History
of the World,
Part 1, which
Barinholtz
says he’s seen
“no joke, 100
times.”
years post-Mad TV were infinitely
harder than the few before. Why?
I was busing tables before and I
couldn’t even get an audition, but
there was a feeling of, “Eh, we’re
all broke actors.” Then I was on
that show for five years, making a
decent income and just busy. And
then it ends, and I don’t get any-
thing for three years. Initially, I
was like, “OK, I’m just going to get
a pilot now.” Like, I’ll head to the
pilot district and find me a pilot
and just do that. (Laughs.) That
did not happen. I tested a lot, but
I’d never make it to the final level.
What was the feedback?
This was 2006 to 2008, and there
was a very specific type of guy
that they were casting: guys that
were just a little better looking, a
little more model-y, a little more
Josh Duhamel or Geoff Stults.
Now, it’s like the freaks are it.
“Oh, your head is five times the
size of a normal person’s? You’re
going to be the star of a sitcom!”
I’d be thriving now. (Laughs.) But
I never got there, and it was a
bummer because there was really
cool stuff happening: The Office
and Parks and Recreation. I missed
them all.
What changed?
Mindy Kaling had this new show.
[David Stassen and I] met with
her and we wore blazers, like,
“We’re just blazer guys, that’s who
we are!” Then she hired us and
found out we were sweatpants-
with-holes guys. After a few
months, she wrote this character,
Morgan, and said she wanted
me to play him. After, like, eight
years of nonstop auditioning
and testing, I finally got past the
network and only because Mindy,
God bless her, was like, “He’s
going to be the guy.”
You hear a lot of writer-stars say,
“I wasn’t getting cast, so I wrote
something for myself.” Has that
been your strategy?
I do tell people, “Write for your-
self, do a Lena Dunham thing.”
But I’m also pragmatic. Even now,
Dave and I will have an idea for
a movie, and I’ll be like, “I’ll play
the lead. … Oh, they don’t want
me? Cool, how about John Cena?”
I have a list of substitutes that I’ll
accept. (Laughs.)
You’re working with Mel Brooks on
History of the World. What do his
notes look like?
Having him laugh at something
you pitch is the greatest thing
in the world. You’re just like, “I
can die now. I did it.” Thankfully,
he didn’t give too many com-
edy notes, but there were times
where we pitched him things
that were fairly esoteric, and
he was like, “Just play the hits.”
Like, we don’t want to ask too
much of the audience, and I think
that served us well.
From where you sit, what is the
appetite for comedy in 2023?
With the business where it is,
everyone has to have, like, seven
different side hustles. So, [in
addition to TV projects,] we have
a large-budget script at Netflix, a
conventional horror comedy, and
we’re about to bring out a much
smaller comedy about grown-ups.
Who makes those comedies today?
It’s either huge — like, “Kevin
Hart and Dwayne Johnson are
twins” — or you’re making a com-
edy for under $10 million. I think
the era of Adam McKay making
The Other Guys, which is one of my
favorite comedies, for $80 mil-
lion is over. If you’re able to tell
Warner Bros. or Universal that
you have a great premise and they
trust that it’ll be funny and you’ll
keep your cast relatively small
and not break the bank, you’re
probably going to be able to make
Barinholtz came up
at Boom Chicago in
the Netherlands with
pals Seth Meyers
and his brother, Josh.
Below: He keeps a
framed copy of a
Twitter exchange. “On
Feb. 25, 2012,” it reads,
“Ike Barinholtz made
Steve Martin laugh.”
those movies. Where they end up
being seen is anyone’s guess.
And that’s a win now?
The win now is getting your movie
made. If you’re able to get a movie
made in 2023, you’re a superhero.
It’s tough and it’s going to get
tougher. Our business has not been
impervious to the destructiveness
of American capitalism in 2023.
We should not be surprised that
the Reaper is coming for us now.
You came up in a very different
comedy environment. How much
do you worry now about where the
line may or may not be?
I think when people in com-
edy talk about cancel culture,
what they’re mad about is being
called out on their shit. And, by
the way, I don’t know any come-
dians that are actually fucking
canceled. [Dave] Chappelle just
won a Grammy, Louis C.K. just
sold out Madison Square Garden.
Nine times out of 10, those com-
plaining about cancel culture
are just mad that someone that
they’ll never meet is saying
“You suck.”
Given all that you’ve done behind
the screen, how willing and inter-
ested are you in taking projects
where you strictly act?
Very. (Laughs.) If I can keep
doing what I’m doing for the rest
of my life, I will be the lucki-
est person ever. The last year or
two, there’s been something that
I’ve written or am working on,
and I’ll get to be there from the
infancy, but then I’ll zip off and
do White House Plumbers or The
Afterparty. It’s like going from
being the captain of the cruise
ship to just having a cocktail on
the lido deck.
You and your brother, Jon, have
both found success out here.
What was going on in your house
growing up?
We have very funny parents, and
my dad was an actor when he was
younger. He used to hang out at
Second City when John Belushi
was there. But he had a child and
thought, “I should be respon-
sible.” So, he went to law school.
Then, last year, a friend of a friend
reached out about a comedy set
in a courtroom and said, “Maybe
your dad could audition to be a
judge.” My brother and I put him
on tape, and he booked it. He’s one
of the leads on this Amazon show.
Wait, what?
It’s fucking crazy. My parents,
at 70, moved to Los Angeles. My
dad joined SAG. He just booked
an episode of Physical and
a commercial!
Interview edited for length
and clarity.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 27 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023


Redefining What a Hero
Looks and Sounds Like
For the star and voice behind the swashbuckling feline in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,
the film’s Oscar nomination is the culmination of a warrior’s journey spanning two decades
T
here are defining roles that
come along once or maybe
twice a lifetime, and I have
to say that voicing the glorious
gato Puss in Boots for almost two
decades has made a huge impact
in my life. Of course, when I was
first asked to play this beautifully
imagined and animated char-
acter, I had no idea that it would
have such a phenomenal global
appeal and lasting power.
Coming back to voice the mem-
orable hero for Puss in Boots: The
Last Wish has been a remarkable
experience. I felt like I was visit-
ing a very dear, clever friend that I
hadn’t heard from in a few years.
We both have grayer whiskers and
are no longer the brash, young
players we used to be. But we’re
now wiser and more introspective
— or at least I hope so!
One of the things I am most
proud of is that Puss in Boots is a
role model in the magical world
of animation. It’s no secret that I
struggled with my English when
I first arrived in Hollywood in
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The Business
Awards
THE RACE
By Antonio Banderas
1988. I was told my accent was too
heavy, that I would be typecast
and be destined to play the “bad
guy.” It was quite a challeng-
ing time for me. I was eager to
prove myself as an actor and to
break out of the limited roles
that were being offered to me,
so I remained optimistic, and I
knew that if I could find the right
project, I could showcase my
talents beyond villainous roles.
So, when the brilliant minds at
DreamWorks Animation decided
to introduce Puss in Boots in
Shrek 2 and honored me with the
chance to voice Puss, it proved to
be a game-changer — not just for
Antonio
Banderas
28
me, but for the industry as well.
One of the things that I always
loved about Puss in Boots is that
he’s a hero with an accent. That
Puss would go on to delight so
many children who had rarely
seen or heard a character at the
center of the cinematic story who
maybe sounded like them — or
sounded like the people they knew
— is one of the greatest joys of my
life. No matter how old you are,
visibility matters. It matters to
see yourself represented as a hero,
be it live action or animated.
In the years since Puss in
Boots debuted as a part of the
Shrek franchise, the representa-
tion of animated film characters
has exploded, from 2017’s Coco
and 2021’s Encanto, which both
tell vibrant stories about Latino
culture and traditions, to 2018’s
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,
which introduced the coolest
Spider-Man ever in Miles Morales,
a character that redefined the
traditional archetype of what a
superhero looks like. All of these
F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
Oscar-winning films remind us
of how important representa-
tion is, and how, sometimes, it
only takes one daring portrayal
to open the door to a new era.
Animation is such a robust
medium, with endless possibili-
ties for stories and characters.
When I look back at the past
20 years, I’m humbled to think
this swashbuckling feline helped
pave the way for more leading
characters and roles in anima-
tion that represent rich, beautiful
cultures around the world.
And this year, Puss is the lead
of a film nominated for best
animated feature at the Academy
Awards alongside other movies
that use the magic of animation
to tell imaginative and complex
stories for audiences of all ages.
These characters, just like Puss,
offer new ways of seeing the
world: a young girl who goes on
a high-seas adventure in The Sea
Beast, another young woman
whose emotions get the better
of her in Turning Red, an Italian
puppet who longs to be a real boy
in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,
and the inquisitive title character
in Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.
Like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,
these stories prove that the things
that make us different from oth-
ers also make us extraordinary.
When I think about the core
message of our movie, about
appreciating the life you’ve been
given and appreciating the people
you choose to spend it with — the
people you call family — I can’t
help but see similarities in my
own life. I think that is why this
film has really struck a chord with
audiences all over the world.
I’m so proud to be part of such a
BOOTS: COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION. BANDERAS: JUAN NAHARRO GIMENEZ/WIREIMAGE.
diverse ensemble, and I would be
remiss to not call out my long-
time dear friend, collaborator and
co-star Salma Hayek as well as
Harvey Guillén, who joined our
team as the relentlessly upbeat
little dog Perrito. Their perfor-
mances inspire me, and I cannot
wait to see what the future holds
for these characters who were
brought into the world alongside
my animated alter ego.
 FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

ȉ   Ǜ Ǜdzdz
Ƥȉ Ǜ ȉ Ƥ  Ǜ
ᕠ٪ dz  ȉ  ‫ع‬
Ǜ ȉ Ƥ  ٪Ǜ ȉ dz Ǜ
dzǛ Ǜ
‫ ־־‬ᕠ٪¯Ǜ Ǜ Ǜ
٪Ǜ Ǜ ‫־־‬٪ȉ 
Ƥ Ǜ ȉ dz ȉ dz ᕠ

% Ǜ Ǜ
Ǜȉ٪ ȉ ȉ Ǜ Ǜ
ȉ dzǛ Ƥ ȉ٪
٪ȉ ٪  ȉ
dz ȉ Ƥ  ȉ
ȉ Ƥ  Ƥ Ǜȉ ᕥ ȉ ȉ
dzȉ 
  dzȉ ȉ Ƥ  ᕠ

O C ITT
¯½‫ف‬
DO O
LISTS

WWW.DESIGNMATTERSMEDIA.COM
 The Business

Awards

BEHIND THE SCREEN

Why Elvis’
Austin Butler Was the
‘Fitting-Room GOAT’
Four-time Oscar-winning costume and production designer
Catherine Martin on how the ‘environment and clothing talked
to each other’ during the making of the Netflix musical film
By Carolyn Giardina

R
enowned costume and
production designer
Catherine Martin and her
husband, director Baz Luhrmann,
are known for the bold visual style
of their collaborations and, not
for nothing, Martin also is a four-
time Oscar winner, having earned
the costume and production
design honors at the Academy
Awards for Moulin Rouge! in 2002
and another pair in the same
categories for The Great Gatsby in
2014. This year, she earned a trio
of nominations for Warner Bros.’
Elvis, for costume and production
design, as well as best picture
since she also is a producer.
Reflecting on her collabora-
tion with Luhrmann, Martin has
learned that “we’re in the busi-
ness of allowing an audience into
a world, connecting the audience
to how it would have felt to be
somewhere.” Effectively, their
work “translates those visuals
into an all-enveloping world that
helps support the story so people
understand who the [characters
are] and where they are.”
She notes that Luhrmann also
considers his movies will have
about 30 percent close-ups, which
for Martin means that costumes
are akin to the set on which the
face of an actor sits. And even
with crowds, “the clothes go hand
in hand [with the environment]
all the time.” She reveals, in fact,
that Luhrmann doesn’t sign off
on a costume unless he’s seen it
— even in a most basic form — on
set: “You know how to anticipate
the environment and the clothing
talking to each other.”
At the start of each project,
Luhrmann presents his thoughts
The reconstruction of the former International Hotel theater, where Elvis Presley performed, was
built on the largest stage at Village Roadshow Studios in Australia and required about 450 extras.
the wardrobe, the period.”
This involved construct-
ing authentic-looking sets for
the film, including the theater
where Presley — played by
Oscar-nominated Austin Butler
— performed at the International
Hotel (later the Hilton, now the
Westgate) in Las Vegas. “It’s enor-
mously wide, and we built it on
the largest stage that we had” at
Village Roadshow Studios in Gold
Coast, Australia, where the movie
filmed, Martin explains. “I think
it really tired poor Austin out
when he had to perform full-out
running up and down that stage.”
They even created an opera-
tional gold curtain on the stage.
“We deliberately made it real
because we wanted Elvis to be able
to interact with it, touch it and pull
That amounted to a herculean
effort from the costume depart-
ment. Roughly 9,000 individual
background cast outfits were
created for use throughout the
movie’s many performance re-
creations, according to Martin.
Butler, meanwhile, had
nearly 100 costume charges,
including re-creations of the
famous jumpsuits made for
Presley by the late costume
designer Bill Belew. “We worked
with the preeminent jumpsuit
maker who has kept Bill Belew’s
flame alive,” Martin says.
In the costumes that Butler
wore for performances, finding
the right fabric was crucial in
terms of “what actually draped
really well and was going to
wiggle beautifully,” says Martin,
ELVIS: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES (2). MARTIN: DON ARNOLD/WIREIMAGE.

on how it will all look. “There’ll
Catherine
Martin be a whole series of musings,
ideas, visual suggestions,” Martin
explains, noting that Elvis was a
little different because they were
creating a world that already
existed. “The first approach was
to really understand the envi-
ronments that Elvis lived in, the
historical context that he lived in,
it up above his head,” says Martin.
“We ended up using exactly the
same fabric bought from the same
company [that created the curtain
for the International].” In addition
to the stage itself, the team con-
structed the backstage and about
half of the auditorium’s seating.
On some days, as many as 450
extras participated in filming.
adding that getting this right
also involved proper tailoring.
Describing Butler as the “fitting-
room GOAT,” she says, “Austin
was subjected to I don’t know
how many fittings with different
pants and stretchy, heavy outfits.
He was just an extraordinary
collaborator. So nice, so hard-
working, so patient.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 30 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche
Audiovisive e Multimediali

Never Overshadow the Star:
Inside Red Carpet Politics
At major Hollywood events, many (though not all) celebrities adhere to a number of under-the-radar fashion do’s and don’ts
depending on where they fit in the evening’s pecking order: ‘I wanted to look good, but not too good, you know?’ By Chris Gardner
t a world premiere of a
A new streaming series in
Hollywood in February
2022, a castmember walked the
carpet in front of TCL Chinese
Theatre wearing a bold, asym-
metrical top paired with black
flare-leg trousers. After fielding
a journalist’s compliment, the
actress responded with a brief
explainer of why she picked the
understated yet chic look.
“I wanted to look good, but
not too good, you know? I’m not
the lead,” offered the veteran
actress, who appears in a hand-
ful of episodes but not all of the
season’s full order. “It’s never a
good idea to outshine the stars
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Style
of the show.” That didn’t happen
on the night in question, as her
famous co-star turned up in a
showstopping gown.
The considerate castmember’s
choice brought to light one of the
lesser-known rules of red car-
pet fashion: Know your role and
dress accordingly.
Over the past year, THR has
been polling actors and fashion
insiders about the politics of
dressing that lie just below the
surface at high-profile events,
revealing a number of sartorial
rules that are specific to red car-
pet culture.
“I have to deal with that a lot,”
explains stylist Jason Bolden of
Illustration by Sofia Romagnolo
Fashion
At the Grammys, nominee Machine Gun Kelly
shone in silver foil, while Megan Fox kept it
more “simple,” said her stylist.
32 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
FOX: KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR THE RECORDING ACADEMY. CHAU: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GETTY IMAGES FOR PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM SOCIETY. DIGGS: AXELLE/BAUER-GRIFFIN/FILMMAGIC. UNION: JEFF SPICER/GETTY IMAGES.
WILLIAMS, HSU: STEVE GRANITZ/FILMMAGIC. BROWN: JOHN SHEARER/WIREIMAGE. BAGS: COURTESY OF BRAND (4). BOLDEN: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES. SWENNEN: STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGES FOR SÉZANE.
making sure his clients are dress-
ing the appropriate part. The
A-list collaborator has a client
list that includes Dwyane Wade,
Michael B. Jordan, Yara Shahidi,
Angelina Jolie, Cynthia Erivo,
Trevor Noah and Serena Williams.
“Sometimes I have clients who
are just attending or present-
ing [at an awards show], and it’s
about picking the appropriate
dress or the appropriate suiting
for that particular client for that
particular event.”
In other words, if you’re simply
a guest, save the yellow Valentino
Couture for when you’re nomi-
nated and instead go with an
all-black Saint Laurent look.
“Showing up in a crazy gown
as someone who is just a guest
can look a little too try-hard,”
hisses one stylist.
Actress Yvette Nicole Brown
agrees. “Would you go to some-
one’s wedding and wear a white
dress? No, you wouldn’t, especially
if you’re a kind and considerate
person. If it’s your premiere, you
want to have your moment. But
if you’re somebody who is on the
list, be grateful that you made it
there and that you get to have a
Hollywood photo for the night,
but it’s fine to let the stars shine.”
To illustrate, Brown recalls the
2017 Emmy Awards, when she
attended as the plus-one of good
friend Anika Noni Rose, who had
been invited to be a presenter.
“We were on the red carpet and
her train was a little rumpled, so
I got down to fix it. There’s a pic-
ture on Getty Images
of me down on the
floor fluffing her
train because even
Bolden though I was on the
red carpet, it wasn’t
my moment, it was
my friend’s moment.
I wanted her to be
Swennen glorious on that
night. You have to
care more about other people and
remember it’s not about you.”
How did that translate to what
Brown wore? “You can pick a nice
dress, but it doesn’t have to be the
dress,” she says.
A more recent example of the
rule: Megan Fox in a demure (for
her) white Zuhair Murad gown to
accompany first-time nominee
Machine Gun Kelly at the Grammy
Awards, where he donned a
custom metallic Dolce & Gabbana
silver-foil suit complete with a
crystal harness. “Tonight was his
night,” posted Fox’s stylist Maeve
Reilly on Instagram, “so we really
wanted to keep her look simple
and classic so he could shine!”
There are other factors to con-
sider. Bolden notes the thought
that goes into what to wear to,
say, a movie premiere where
numerous members of a cast
will be photographed together.
Last year, he dressed client
DeWanda Wise for the press tour
for Jurassic World: Dominion, and
the two “wanted to do a really
big, explosive kind of gown, but
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
H OW T H E S E S TA R S C H O O S E T H E I R L O O K S
“What feels “If it feels
good and
comfortable”
great”
you can’t do that when it’s a cast.
You have to think about what the
photo will look like. Instead, we
went with these more statue-like,
column-style dresses that played
well along with everyone else. You
have to be really thoughtful.”
But as with most fashion pre-
cepts — like wearing white after
Labor Day — red carpet etiquette
is, for some, a mere suggestion
that can be easily ignored.
Gabrielle Union, who is styled
by Thomas Christos Kikis, knows
the rules but pays little attention.
“No, baby,” she tells THR when
Quilted Denim
Saint Laurent Puffer Medium
Chain bag; $3,300, ysl.com
“Swinging
for the “A good “Keep ’em
fences every dress” guessing”
time”
Clockwise from above left:
The Whale’s Hong Chau at
the Palm Springs International
Film Festival gala in January;
Daveed Diggs in Moschino
at the 2022 Independent
Spirit Awards; Gabrielle
Union in Elie Saab at the
Strange World U.K. premiere
last year; Michelle Williams
in custom Louis Vuitton at
this year’s Critics Choice;
Stephanie Hsu in Valentino
Haute Couture at the same
event; at the Emmys in 2017,
Yvette Nicole Brown (left) let
her friend Anika Noni Rose, a
presenter, have the spotlight
on the red carpet.
asked if she dresses differently
based on her role in any given
event. “I am swinging for the
fences every time I’m out there.”
Same for Daveed Diggs, who has
turned up to events in eye-catch-
ing suits by Moschino and Atelier
Versace: “There’s not a whole lot
of strategy other than how do I
feel when I hold the thing up? If it
feels great when it goes on, that’s
what I should wear.”
Tara Swennen, whose client
list includes Kristen Stewart and
Matthew McConaughey, says she
thinks less about where her actors
Arm Candy for Awards Season
Woven Wonder Petite Hobo
Bottega Veneta’s leather Mini Miu Miu Wander bag;
Jodie; $2,650, bottegaveneta.com $2,600, miumiu.com
33 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
fall on the call sheet and more
about the circumstances and
ambience of the event. “I try not
to think about what their position
is and more about where they’re
going — the mood, the crowd,
the vibe. I also just want them to
feel comfortable.”
Insiders also are quick to men-
tion that social media has made it
easier to disregard fashion rules
because when someone is posting
a look on Instagram — a common
practice and often done to help
fulfill a contractual obligation
with a specific brand as part of
a larger deal — it’s generally not
presented in the context of who
else is on the red carpet.
THR also caught up with a pair
of this year’s best supporting
actress nominees for the upcom-
ing Oscars and asked them if they
are selecting more bold choices
this season since they are in the
mix. The Whale’s Hong Chau says
that while she’s still learning the
ins and outs of the entire season,
she mostly ignores the noise and
focuses on “what’s going to make
me feel good and comfortable.”
Everything Everywhere All at
Once star Stephanie Hsu, who
works with the styling team of
Wayman Bannerman and Micah
McDonald, says there’s always
intention behind what they do:
“Sometimes I approach it the
same way I would for a role where
if you go big one time, sometimes
it’s nice to neutralize the palate
and go clean the next time. Keep
’em guessing.”
And for Michelle Williams, the
Oscar-nominated star of Steven
Spielberg’s The Fabelmans who
has long worked with stylist Kate
Young, there’s only one rule that
matters: “A good dress is a good
dress is a good dress.”
Chic Canvas
Celine Cabas drawstring bag;
$2,950, celine.com — NATALIE ALCALA
 Style

Red Carpet

3 4 5

The BAFTA
Awards:
Best Dressed
Lilac wowed, metallics shone and
big names rewore dresses Feb. 19 at
1
London’s Royal Festival Hall
1 Prince William, president of BAFTA, looked sharp
8 in a velvet Tom Ford tux, while wife Kate Middleton

PRINCE WILLIAM: CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES. YEOH, KEOGHAN: NEIL MOCKFORD/FILMMAGIC. BLANCHETT, ACKIE, TURNER-SMITH: SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE. REDMAYNE,
supported sustainability in fashion by rewearing a
one-shoulder Alexander McQueen dress that she
wore to the 2019 BAFTA Awards. She accessorized
with $28 floral earrings from Zara (now sold out).

BUTLER: IAN WEST/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES. ATIM: MIKE MARSLAND/WIREIMAGE. BASSETT: STEPHANE CARDINALE - CORBIS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES.
2 Best actress nominee Michelle Yeoh looked
elegant in an impeccably tailored caped Dior suit in
9 blush champagne silk that she called “English chic.”
She and other stars wore blue ribbons supporting
the U.N. Refugee Agency UNHCR.
3 Best actress winner Cate Blanchett and her
10 stylist Elizabeth Stewart made a conscious red
carpet choice, working with Maison Margiela to
restyle a sleeveless dress she’d worn to the 2015
7 Oscars. The actress’ Louis Vuitton necklace is
made of repurposed Tahitian pearls.
4 Rising Star nominee Naomi Ackie stunned in a
custom Loewe dress with mirrored peplum belt.
5 Nominee Eddie Redmayne went without a shirt in
a tuxedo-style jumpsuit by Alexander McQueen.
6 Rising Star nominee Sheila Atim was
otherworldly in a crystal-embroidered silver satin
dress by Prada.
7 Nominee Angela Bassett wore a custom halter-
neck Pamella Roland dress with luxuriously draped
silk sleeves that “was inspired by the tulips and
flowers of spring,” said her stylist, Jennifer Austin.
8 Best supporting actor winner Barry Keoghan
went bold in a red Alexander McQueen suit paired
with a white shirt featuring a contrasting collar.
9 Jodie Turner-Smith accessorized her crystal-
embroidered, feathered lilac Gucci gown with a
stunning sapphire and diamond Chopard choker
and what her makeup artist Joey Choy called
“crystal freckles.”
10 Austin Butler looked debonair in a wide-lapel
6 Alexander McQueen tuxedo. “This means the world
to me,” Butler said of winning best actor for his
performance in Elvis. — DEGEN PENER

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 34 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 Paul Mescal was A U L
P
photographed Feb. 10
at The Record Room
in Los Angeles.
Styling by Felicity Kay
Margaret Howell vest,
tank and pants.

P A
U
L
ON
the day he turned
16, Paul Mescal was
on a stage, being
presented with a
cake by the cast and
crew of his high school production of
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom
of the Opera. “That’s the first thing I
ever did, so I actually take great pride
in it,” says Mescal of his public act-
ing debut, playing the Phantom. (The
entire production has been uploaded
by the school to YouTube. Mescal is a
gifted high baritone.) “That was the
moment when I was like, ‘Oh fuck —
this adrenaline is incredible,’ ” he says.
“I’ve never felt a high like that.”
Imagine the high, then, that Mescal
is feeling today, his 27th birthday. He’ll
spend it on a stage once more, as the
marquee draw of the hottest theater
ticket in London, possibly even the
English-speaking world. It’s a radical
reworking of Tennessee Williams’ A
Streetcar Named Desire starring Mescal
as Stanley Kowalski, the part that
famously launched Marlon Brando, first
on Broadway then in film. The reviews
have been stellar, with THR praising
his menacing Stanley as a “ticking time
bomb” whose “destruction of Blanche”
— Dubois, the play’s faded debutante,
played by Spanish-British actress
Patsy Ferran — “is deliberate, cruel
and shocking.”
Adding to the adrenaline is the
fact that this birthday comes nine
days after Mescal learned he’d been
nominated for an Oscar for his work in
A24’s Aftersun, a festival darling from
first-time director Charlotte Wells of
Scotland. With that, Mescal gains entry
into one of Hollywood’s most exclusive
and illustrious clubs: 26-year-old best
actor nominees. It consists of Orson
Welles for Citizen Kane, James Dean
for Giant, Heath Ledger for Brokeback
Mountain and Ryan Gosling for Half-
Nelson. If he wins — and it’s anyone’s For our rendezvous, Mescal suggests came to the [men’s] dressing room. We
race with five first-time nominees, a health food spot — though he’ll only were in our pants,” says Mescal, refer-
including his fellow Irishman Colin drink a coffee, then later politely ask to ring to underwear.) The Almeida has
Farrell — he will be the youngest best smoke a cigarette — a few blocks from been an incubator for many successful
actor winner ever, beating Adrien the Almeida Theatre, a 325-seat venue West End transfers. Sure enough, this
Brody by three years. in North London where Streetcar has Streetcar, directed by Rebecca Frecknall
It’s a bit much to take in for a guy been playing to packed houses since — who won an Olivier Award directing
who just three years ago was an anony- Dec. 20. Mescal saunters up having Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley in
mous young theater actor in Dublin. come directly from the gym, wearing a a 2021 Cabaret revival — will relocate
“It’s a world that I may be starting to long overcoat (a label on the cuff reads to London’s Phoenix Theatre in March.
understand slightly,” he says of his Gucci) over a navy fleece and worn Every ticket for the six-week West End
success. “And I love work. If I could denim jeans. A cap bearing the name run sold out in a single day.
work every day, every hour, I would. I of his health club is tucked over his I ask him about the Oscar nomina-
get itchy when I’m not working. I know famous gray blue eyes. tion, his emotional reaction to which
at some point I’ll get tired and prob- The Saturday prior, Nicole Kidman was documented in a family Zoom,
ably burn out for a little bit, but I don’t was in attendance at Streetcar and led shared on social media by his younger
feel that now.” that evening’s standing ovation. (“She sister Nell. His mother, recently

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 38 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 diagnosed with cancer, had gotten her
hair cut short that day in preparation
for chemotherapy. The family is in
tears. Shocked faces. Joyful disbelief.
Did it come as a total surprise to him?
“It’s very hard to avoid the forecasting,”
Mescal says. “So I was kind of aware
that I was maybe on the bubble — like
on the outside of potentially getting a
nomination. I was aware that films like
Aftersun aren’t the go-to Oscar pick a lot
of the time. So it was a big surprise. The
surprise was real. Yeah.”
B
orn in 1996, Mescal grew up in
County Kildare, a suburb west of
Dublin, the first of three chil-
dren born to mom Dearbhla, a police
constable, and Paul Sr., a grade school
teacher. “It’s very hard not to gush,”
he says of his parents, “but they’re just
incredible. They drove me to every
PREVIOUS SPREAD: GROOMING: CHRISTINE NELLI AT KALPANA. LOCATION: THE RECORD ROOM/PEERSPACE. THIS SPREAD: AFTERSUN: A24/EVERETT COLLECTION.
single Gaelic football training session.”
Mescal excelled at the sport, a combi-
nation of rugby and soccer, captaining
his team in 2014 before leveling up to
the under-21s league, where he was a
rising star. “It’s physical,” he says. “You
represent your town. And then, if you
get asked to represent your county —
there are 32 counties — you compete
in an all-Ireland championship. I loved
it. That was, to be honest, the thing
that was in direct competition with me
becoming an actor.”
He ultimately chose acting but found
Gaelic football hard to give up. On the
Saturday before the start of his third
year at The Lir Academy, Ireland’s pre-
mier drama school, Mescal — who was
secretly still playing, against school
rules — broke his jaw on the pitch. “I
was reaching out for the ball and I just
got smacked across the face,” he recalls.
“I was lucky in that it was a clean break.
It just snapped. I didn’t have to get it
wired shut, thankfully.” That put an
end to Gaelic football once and for all.
Mescal graduated in 2017 and
immediately found consistent work
in Dublin’s theater scene, eventually
landing the lead in a revival of The
Lieutenant of Inishmore. Mescal was
rendered starstruck when the play’s
celebrated writer, Martin McDonagh,
“came in for a day to watch rehearsals.”
Little could Mescal have known that
just three years later, he would be vying
for an Oscar alongside McDonagh,
whose The Banshees of Inisherin was
nominated for nine awards, including
original screenplay and directing for
McDonagh, as well as acting honors for
stars Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry
Condon and Barry Keoghan.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Gleeson sent Mescal “a lovely mes-
sage” of congratulations. “I’m hoping
that the Oscars afterparties are going
to be fun — because I think the Irish
can show up in that setting,” he says
with a smile. I ask what it is about the
Irish condition that produces so many
of Hollywood’s most celebrated artists.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I feel like we’ve
always overrepresented ourselves. Just
in terms of population, we’re punching
above our weight.”
I note that Ireland has produced
some of the theater’s greatest writers
— not just McDonagh (who, it should
be said, was born and raised in London
to Irish parents), but Oscar Wilde,
Samuel Beckett and Seán O’Casey, to
name a few. Mescal nods emphatically.
“It all comes back to writing,” he
says. “There’s a culture of writing in
Ireland that I think somewhere along
the way makes its way into the acting
stuff. Because if you’re working with
good writing, it forces you to step up. A
lot of the writing onscreen is shit. And
that then requires your body to find the
path of least resistance. If the writing
isn’t good, it doesn’t require a kind of
engagement. Whereas I think working
in the theater has helped me with that.”
Mescal’s big break — to put it mildly
— was thanks to another Irish writer;
not a playwright but a novelist. Sally
Rooney’s second novel, Normal People,
“There’s a culture of was released in 2018 and quickly
writing in Ireland that
I think makes its way became a publishing sensation. A richly
into the acting stuff,”
says Mescal when asked drawn tale of romance and friendship
the source of his native between an unlikely pair of Irish teens
country’s success at
the Academy Awards. — the handsome athlete Connell and
“Because if you’re the intellectual oddball Marianne — it
working with good
writing, it forces you to sold more than 3 million copies.
step up.” Below: Mescal
with Frankie Corio in In 2019, a TV miniseries based on the
Aftersun, in which he book — a co-production of BBC Three
plays a father who
takes his daughter on and Hulu — was announced. Dublin-
holiday while struggling based casting director Louise Kiely
with depression.
(who also cast Banshees) was familiar
with Mescal through the local theater
scene. “I’d been in to read for her for
a couple of things that she was cast-
ing, but they didn’t go my way,” says
Mescal, who at that point had only
once acted in front of a camera, in a TV
spot for Denny, an Irish sausage brand.
(Unaware that he was supposed to
spit out the product between takes, he
ended up consuming about 15 sausage
links by the shoot’s end.)
There were four rounds of auditions
for Normal People. First, Mescal taped
a scene at Kiely’s office — the one in
which Connell and Marianne sit in
an Italian piazza, eat ice cream and
confront their class differences. The
series’ director, Lenny Abrahamson,
39 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
liked what he saw and brought Mescal
in for a solo audition. Then the actor
was called in for two rounds of chem-
istry reads. At the second, he met
and read with Daisy Edgar-Jones. She
brought an electricity to the pairing
that other actresses did not. Mescal
heard nothing for several long days.
“Then I remember I was over here
[in London] doing a workshop for a
musical or something, and I just got a
call and was like, ‘It’s gone your way.’
And I just stepped out of the rehearsal
room and just fucking screamed,” he
recalls. Edgar-Jones, we now know, was
cast as Marianne.
It’s impossible to oversell just what
a seismic effect Normal People — and
Mescal’s depiction of Connell Waldron
— had on the pop-cultural land-
scape. Premiering at the height of the
COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020, the
series, with its unflinching depictions
of sex (Mescal reclines fully nude in
one postcoital scene) and intimacy
gave the flesh-starved, pandemic-
gripped masses something to cling to.
Mescal, meanwhile — with his square
jaw, Roman nose and, particularly,
his Gaelic football-developed thighs
— quite suddenly found himself the
target of global infatuation. For a good
part of 2020, virtually no physical
detail escaped online fetishization. An
Instagram account, “Connell Waldron’s
Chain,” posted nothing but photos
of his character in a signature silver
necklace; it amassed 143,000 followers.
Strangest of all was that all of this
transpired during lockdown, so Mescal
could only experience his overnight
stardom virtually, just like the rest of
us. Then restrictions began to ease,
and he began moving around London,
only to find himself swarmed wher-
ever he went. “That felt like the most
life-altering moment,” he recalls.
“Everything since has felt like little
mini-explosions of madness.”
Weirder yet, everyone seemed to
think he was the sensitive jock he
played on TV. But that simply wasn’t
the case. “I’m far from that person,” he
says. “There are similarities, of course,
because we culturally come from the
same place, we both play Gaelic football
and we both suffer a little bit with
depression — he more so than I do.
“But there are no complaints with
that because the writing and direc-
tion of that show was beautiful. It was
a portrayal of what it is to be a young
person in today’s world. And of course
a lot of things are easier, but it’s just
fucking hard sometimes,” he says.
A
ftersun came to Mescal exactly two
years ago, while he was filming
God’s Creatures — one of several
film roles he took on in the wake of
Normal People’s success (the other being
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter,
in which he played a beach attendant
at a Grecian resort patronized by
Olivia Colman). Both films screened
at Cannes in 2022, but while God’s
Creatures was well received, Aftersun
became the talk of the festival, earn-
ing Wells the French Touch Jury Prize,
awarded for “the audacity and cre-
ativity of a filmmaker for one of their
first cinematographic works.” Mescal,
meanwhile, making his Cannes debut
in Gucci suits adorned by Cartier, for
which he was named an ambassador,
was a red carpet sensation.
Inspired by director Wells’ child-
hood memories of her father, Aftersun
follows a vacation in Turkey taken by
a 11-year-old girl (played by Frankie
Corio) and her young dad, Calum, who
— like Normal People’s Connell and, by
his own admission, Mescal himself —
suffers from depression. Mescal loved
the script and Wells’ short films. They
met over Zoom. “I felt very artistically
aligned with her and what she wanted
to make,” he recalls. “And it was what I
wanted to make.” Says Wells, “He was
just so thoughtful in the way he spoke
about the script, so attentive to the
script, so empathetic for the character
already, had such interesting questions
and was just clearly very committed to
his craft and this project.”
While casting Mescal “was certainly
attractive to my producers,” having
an internationally famous heartthrob
playing her father’s proxy “wasn’t the
path that we had been going down with
regard to casting,” Wells says. “I see
now the attention that came to the film
as a result of having cast Paul. But that
wasn’t on my mind personally when I
cast him. I cast him because he felt like
the best fit for the role and he felt like
the best partner for the project.”
The film contains few major plot
developments, offering instead a
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
breadcrumb trail of brief exchanges,
seared images, sidelong glances. In
that fragmentary way, it works much
as human memory does. The audi-
ence is left to surmise Calum’s fate for
themselves. Mescal loves the ambi-
guity, “how little exposition there is.
The actual concrete circumstances
don’t matter. I think that’s why people
engage with it and have such strong
opinions about it,” he says. Ultimately,
Mescal says, Calum’s journey “is rooted
in a confusion.”
“I came away thinking that maybe he
suffered from some sexual confusion,”
I offer, tossing out a pet theory about
Calum’s orientation.
Mescal promptly douses it with
cold water. “That wasn’t in my head
“ IF I C O ULD
WORK E V ERY
at all,” he says. “And that’s not to say
that that’s not correct or right. It’s
more so to do with the fact that I think
he’s doing the maths of this holiday,
DAY, E V ERY
and he’s with the person that he loves HOUR , I WOULD .
most in the world. And he’s had a
great day with her and something’s not I GET ITCHY
adding up.” W HE N I ’ M NO T
WORK ING .
“He should be happy,” I say.
“And he’s not,” he replies.
From left: Daisy
I K NOW AT SOME
Edgar-Jones
and Mescal in P OIN T I ’ LL
G E T T IR E D A ND
2020’s Normal
People; Mescal
and Patsy Ferran
in a production
of A Streetcar BURN OU T F OR
A LI T T LE BI T,
Named Desire
at London’s
Almeida Theatre.
BU T I DON ’ T
FEEL TH AT NOW.”
“His brain doesn’t let it happen.”
“His brain doesn’t let it happen,”
Mescal repeats in solidarity. “He doesn’t
know what it is in his brain that’s not
making that happen. And that’s scary
and that’s confusing. Yeah.”
I
t’s a brisk Tuesday evening in
London. Sipping on a plastic cup of
chardonnay, I scan the lobby of the
Almeida Theatre for any Kidman-level
NORMAL: ENDA BOWE/©HULU/EVERETT COLLECTION. STREETCAR: MARC BRENNER.
stars in attendance. I am disap-
pointed to spot none — not even a
Great British Bake-Off-level star. Killing
time, I strike up a conversation with a
woman next to me. She tells me in an
American accent that she and her two
daughters had spent the past 12 hours
in a line hoping to score a handful of
rush tickets to Streetcar. She introduces
me to new friends made in line, about
a dozen of them, all of them women in
their 20s, all of them buzzing at their
good fortune. I get the sense they didn’t
40 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
 wait 12 hours in the cold because they
are huge Tennessee Williams stans.
Playing Stanley is no calculated
effort on Mescal’s part to differentiate
himself from the sensitive, melancholy
characters that made him famous.
The role has been a dream of his since
drama school — ever since an acting
teacher told him he didn’t have the
commitment to do it and suggested
he perhaps would be better off playing
the milquetoast Mitch, Stanley’s poker
buddy. “I was like, ‘Why?’ ” Mescal says,
still wounded. “He was like, ‘I think you
just need to take bigger swings. You
need to be bolder in your choices.’ ”
It was, of course, a provocation; his
teacher knew a ferocious Stanley was
inside Mescal somewhere. Mescal took
it as a personal challenge. “And he was
right,” he says of the teacher’s assess-
ment. “I was OK. I was committed. But
I was never on the edge of being bad.
If you’re ready to go to a point where it
could break apart and be shit, and you
can see the seams of everything, that’s
when it starts getting good.”
And his Stanley is indeed good —
great, even. It’s far more menacing
than Brando’s, more focused, more
athletic. At one point, Mescal, sport-
ing a hipster mullet, strips to his
underwear — yes, the audience gets
the Kidman view — and slides into a
pair of red silk pajamas, as specified
by Williams in the text. Then Mescal
veers from the script by dropping to all
fours and tracking Blanche like prey.
“Paul discovered that during a physi-
cal rehearsal,” says director Frecknall.
“We called it The Dog. He became this
weird, feral dog. It really scared me.”
After the run, Mescal will have a few
months off before heading into produc-
tion this summer on Gladiator 2, which
will shoot in Europe. Mescal was hand-
picked to star in the sequel by Ridley
Scott, who is back at the reins from
where his 2000 best picture winner left
off. Contrary to rumors of gladiatorial
sparring among Hollywood’s leading
men, Mescal says he did not have to
audition for the lead role of adult Lucius,
depicted in the original as the young
nephew of Commodus, the Roman
Emperor played by Joaquin Phoenix.
He simply took a meeting with the
85-year-old directing legend in which
Scott “discussed the parameters of the
story. Then, after the fact, I was given a
script,” Mescal says. “And I’m so proud
Wales Bonner I get to make it. It’s an intimidating
sweater and shirt,
Gucci pants, feat. It’s something I’m nervous about
Wales Bonner x
Adidas shoes, but something I feel like I can do.”
Sunspel socks.
I ask what kind of transformation his
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 41 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
body — just a bit thicker than a com-
petitive swimmer’s build — might have
to undergo to play a gladiator.
“With films like this and superhero
films, there is sometimes a focus on
that,” he says, “which I don’t find that
interesting. Of course there’s a physical
robustness required for the character,
but past that, I’m not interested. This
guy’s got to fight and got to be a beast.
And whatever that looks and feels like
is right for me, is what it’s going to be.
Sometimes I see films and I’m like,
‘That person doesn’t look real.’ ”
Further down the line — like much,
much further — Mescal will put those
Phantom pipes to good use in Richard
Linklater’s adaptation of Stephen
Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which
will shoot Boyhood-style over the next
two decades, allowing the cast to age
in real time. “The musical-theater boy
in me is very satiated by it all,” he says.
(Linklater declined a request for com-
ment, saying to ask him again “in about
18 years.”) But it won’t take two decades
to hear him sing. In April, audiences can
catch Mescal in Carmen, a movie adapta-
tion of the Georges Bizet opera directed
by Benjamin Millepied. Set in the pres-
ent day along the Mexico-U.S. border,
Mescal plays a Marine with PTSD.
Right now, sitting outside a smoothie
and health bowl shop in North London,
puffing on a cigarette and pondering
life, Mescal seems pretty OK. He’s well
aware of the fascination that swirls
around his personal life — more
specifically his rumored breakup with
singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers,
who lives in East L.A. At the moment,
he’d prefer to keep his thoughts on
that topic to himself. “Maybe at some
point,” he says. “But just not now. It’s
just difficult territory. Yeah.”
In a few days, Mescal will fly to
Hollywood for the Oscar Nominees
Luncheon, where he’ll set camera
shutters and hearts aflutter in a double-
breasted suit and undershirt combo
that could single-handedly bring back
the Miami Vice look. “I love L.A.,” Mescal
says. “I feel like I was introduced to it in
the right way through people outside of
the acting community. I have a love for
it that I wasn’t expecting to ever have.
I’m looking forward to spending a bit of
time there in the next couple of weeks.”
“So, is this your best birthday
ever?” I ask.
He takes a moment to mull it over.
“Yeah,” Mescal says with a grin. “It’s
been a fucking wild year. Many ups and
downs. It’s been kind of spectacular in
that sense. Yeah.”
Need a Black Hawk on
Set by Friday?
Call This Couple
How married product placement specialists
ADAM AND CAT STONE became Hollywood’s go-to duo
for navigating the tricky minefield of procuring military hardware

BY Gary Baum • ILLUSTR ATION BY Moron Eel

 When producer Jeff Waxman requires military hardware and
tactical gear for his movies, he calls Adam and Cat Stone,
a long-married couple operating
out of the Manhattan Beach home
they share with their three kids. In
recent years, they’ve secured body
armor and motorcycles for John
Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, as
well as a C-130 military transport
plane and an air base for Don’t
Look Up. For Waxman’s still-to-
be-slated feature Our Man From
Jersey, a spy thriller starring Mark
Wahlberg and Halle Berry, the
pair was tasked with delivering
Range Rovers in both left-hand
and right-hand drive on deadline
for action sequences in multiple
international territories. “It’s
always a mess when I’m not deal-
ing with them,” the producer says.
The Stones are among the
leading independent product-
placement specialists in
Hollywood, and during a recent
lunch on the terrace at the Polo
Lounge, they spoke of how they’ve
cornered enough of the market
in what they term the “tactical
space” that they’ve established
a dedicated unit within their
firm, Stone Management, called
Modern Warfare to address it.
By Adam’s reckoning, The Hurt
Locker, winner of the best picture
Oscar in 2010, was “our entrée
into this; a lottery ticket.” Since
then, they’ve landed gear from
top tactical-sector companies
like AGM and London Bridge
Trading in The Gray Man and
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Zero Dark Thirty, respectively,
and served as matchmaker for
defense giant Lockheed Martin to
consult with director James Gray
and his production team on his
space-exploration epic Ad Astra.
The couple’s next projects include
the upcoming special ops thriller
Land of Bad, starring Russell
Crowe and Liam Hemsworth,
and the military-cult movie Tin
Soldier, featuring Jamie Foxx and
Robert De Niro. (They won’t dis-
close the brands they’re working
with prior to the films’ release.)
The Stones met in 1999, on the
Miami set of an indie skydiv-
ing thriller, Cutaway. “It was an
AFM special,” explains Adam,
referring to the American Film
Market, which is known as a
clearinghouse for lower-budget
action fare. He was a producer
on the Point Break-esque project,
having earned a series of similar
credits after graduating from
USC film school and learning the
business at fabled B-movie studio
The Cannon Group. Cat, the “hot
blonde” — Adam’s words — who’d
been cast as co-star Dennis
Rodman’s drug-smuggling girl-
friend, became Adam’s wife two
years later, leaving behind a busy
print-modeling career in Europe.
They briefly entertained the
notion of raising a family while
shooting around the world, itiner-
ancy sustained by tax incentives,
44
then decided a better plan would
be to work together from home.
Given their backgrounds and
relationships with merchandis-
ers, ad hoc requests to consult on
brand partnerships for pro-
ductions soon turned into a
lightbulb moment. “I looked at
Cat,” explains Adam, “and I said,
‘We’re going to become real estate
agents — but do it for the screen.’ ”
The couple works on as many
as 10 projects at once, aided by
a small staff. Adam focuses on
the production side, cultivating
creatives and their financiers
— the latter often keen to either
trim shooting costs or bolster
the marketing budget for the
release. Meanwhile Cat, more at
ease with ROIs and other metrics,
is the brand whisperer, the one
conspiring how to get a signature
product from No. 5 to No. 2 in
sales in its category during the
next 36 months. As she explains,
“Each one comes with a different
brand weight. Some want to be
in absolutely everything. Some
Adam and Cat Stone
F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
are focused on a few key projects
that are very important to them.
Some have a favorite actor and
they just want to chase everything
that person is in.” (The Stones,
who employ a script reader to vet
for nascent collaborative oppor-
tunities — “not everybody has
such early access to material,”
Adam says — are typically paid on
retainer by brands and on a per-
project basis by productions.)
“It’s real practical,” Cat says
of the logistical core of the job.
“We’re going to help you get
stuff.” Echoes Adam: “The most
important part of our business is
delivery. There’s a certain exi-
HURT: SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. LOOK: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX. STONES: COURTESY OF SUBJECT.
gency with production that has
to be met — and not everybody
gets it. ‘I can get you X amount
of Armani.’ Great. But if it isn’t
there in time for the fittings, it’s
a waste.” Cat again: “Also, can you
get big things? Which require the
right paperwork to arrive? Your
Black Hawk [military helicopter]
will be on set when you need it.”
Vetting is another consider-
ation; no brand wants to become
the wrong kind of meme. Just as
alcohol companies can’t work
with stars who’ve had DUIs and
one country’s approved phar-
maceutical is another territory’s
illegal substance, in the defense
realm, there’s the requirement to
comply with International Traffic
in Arms Regulations, which

The Stones
placed the
bomb-diffusing
suit in The
Hurt Locker
(left) and the
C-130 in Don’t
Look Up.
govern the export of military-
related technologies.
101 Studios head David Glasser,
who’s partnered with the Stones
for two decades, most recently on
Yellowstone and its offshoots for a
variety of product needs, explains
that “they really find the perfect
marriage between a brand and a
creator. When you’re working with
someone like a Taylor Sheridan
“[For defense contractors] this is much more about bragging rights —
‘EVERYBODY KNOWS HOLLYWOOD CHOSE US.’ ”
or an Antoine Fuqua, you have to
be very specific in how you look
for organic opportunities to do
things — and you have to have a
producorial skill in your mindset.
If you asked me for their competi-
tion, I couldn’t tell you.” Cat says
exercising restraint in onscreen
placement is key, for clients as
well as audiences: “It’s about what
makes sense — what’s not atro-
cious. Nobody wants to cringe.”
For defense contractors
and other military-oriented
firms whose business models
aren’t geared toward consumer
demographics, appearing in
productions is less about a
potential sales bump than brand
recognition within their insular,
hypercompetitive milieus. “This is
much more about bragging rights
— ‘Everybody knows Hollywood
chose us,’ ” explains Cat. Adds
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Adam: “There might ultimately
be just a few thousand people
that even understand, in some
cases, what exactly that product
is [shown onscreen]. But they all
know who won the stakes.”
Gary Moore, a global brand
manager for Dell Technologies,
points to its Rugged line of
laptops and tablets, which are
acquired by government agen-
cies and police forces. “We want
to see them in appropriate
scenes,” he says. The Stones have
positioned them in a number of
productions, including the Netflix
actioner Extraction, about a black
ops mercenary, and Epix’s CIA
thriller Condor. In signing off on
such decisions, Moore is mind-
ful of the context. “I use the Jason
Bourne series as an example,”
he says. “Clearly Jason Bourne
is an aggressive, somewhat
violent character, but he is the
protagonist and you’re rooting
for him. [Vetting] is more art
than process. I can read a script
or look at a detailed synopsis.”
(Todd Handelsman, a vp at the
Stones’ firm, notes that client Fiji
Water was cool with an off-label
use of its bottle in 2022’s Bullet
Cat Stone
Train, given the circumstances: “It
helps that the person putting the
sleeping powder in it is Brad Pitt.
I’ve learned that the not-OK-usage
can be OK if it’s a big, A-list star.”)
Tony Mark, a seasoned produc-
tion manager turned producer, is
still amazed by what the Stones
pulled off for him on The Hurt
Locker. “I think it’s legitimate to
say they performed miracles,” he
says. “There was no way in the
world on our small-budget film
to think about getting a bomb-
disposal robot. We were thinking
about how to get the special effects
department to make something
that we could pass off. Adam and
Cat thought we should try to get
one. I was like, ‘Really? That’ll
never happen.’ Then they con-
vinced Northrop [Grumman] to
allow us to use their latest itera-
tion of a bomb disposal robot, and
45
it cost us flying over and putting
up their technicians. The level of
production value that gave the
film was invaluable. You simply
understood that you were watch-
ing something that was genuine.”
Mark, who’s since gone on to
work with the couple on CBS’ SEAL
Team Six and TNT’s The Last Ship,
adds that they then convinced
bomb-suit manufacturer Med-Eng
to provide multiple $75,000 pro-
tective suits for The Hurt Locker.
“What brand was going to give you
a suit where in the very first scene
the actor dies in it?” (Some modi-
fications were made to change
the look of the apparatuses.) The
Stones, who when pitching these
firms on The Hurt Locker had
yet to develop a track record on
defense-oriented projects, say
they convinced the clients through
sheer persistence and concerted
focus on how the products would
be portrayed in context onscreen.
Paul Cabellon, who now heads
communications for the satel-
lite imaging firm BlackSky, was
then the point person at Northrop
Grumman. “I can’t imagine how
difficult it is for Adam and Cat
to navigate these waters,” he
says. “It’s really hard to walk up
to the defense industry and ask
for stuff, because they don’t need
[the exposure],” noting that the
defense field operates on glacial
time horizons and 10-digit gov-
ernment contracts. What’s more,
while executives — typically
former military officers who’ve
pivoted to the private sector —
may be intrigued by the notion
of their product lines appearing
in Hollywood projects, their by-
the-book training backgrounds
and more controlled ethos often
hinder the ability to get deals
done in a far looser, artistic
milieu. “They’re not optimized
for romance,” explains Cabellon,
himself a Marine Corps veteran.
U.S. military-themed produc-
tions must decide whether they
want to pursue the Faustian
bargain of Department of Defense
F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
approval. The process is
freedom-infringing. In return for
negotiated access to active-duty
personnel, restricted locations
and expensive gear, they endure
federal-government sluggish-
ness, rigidity and bureaucratic
sign-off on scripts. Some, like
Top Gun: Maverick, persevere. But
many opt for plan B, which often
requires either extensive CGI or
else attempts to broker deals with
the private sector that supplies
that same expensive gear.
Defense brands are a differ-
ent breed of production partner.
Aside from the obvious (“The
toys are more expensive” than in
other business sectors, explains
Adam), they’re hyperconscious
of the potential double edge of
showcasing their products to the
general taxpaying public who
otherwise likely don’t dwell much
on the implications of their cost
or use. As Cabellon puts it of view-
ers: “People who are pro-military
will probably be like, ‘We need
to spend more.’ Then others may
think, ‘We need to re-question
our defense policy.’ ”
On this topic, the Stones
themselves resist any ideological
position aside from the aes-
thetic, pointing out that the
military-themed projects they’ve
worked on have expressed senti-
ments ranging from the rah-rah
to the reproachful, yet their
goal is the same: verisimili-
tude. “These brands are part of
the real fabric of these worlds,”
Adam says.
Back on the Polo Lounge’s ter-
race, the Stones need to hit the
road. There’s the long drive back
to Manhattan Beach, and the
need to check in on one child’s
piano lesson as well as one brand
client’s vehicle. The latter is
currently en route to a produc-
tion set whose title they wouldn’t
reveal. “It’s a museum piece, and
we have to move it across six
borders,” explains Adam. Adds
Cat: “There’s a live tracker [on it].
We’re monitoring.”
Presenting its third annual awards on March 7, The Podcast Academy is
determined to establish itself as the preeminent arbiter of audio excellence
By J. Clara Chan
→ Just as film and TV have the Oscars and the
Emmys, The Podcast Academy is positioning the
Ambies to become the event of the year for the
podcast industry as well as the newest fixture of
Hollywood awards season, complete with shiny
statuettes and a swanky ceremony that, for at
least one evening, compels podcasters to dress
for the camera.
Hosted by Larry Wilmore, the annual event’s
third edition is taking place March 7 at the
Westgate Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. The
company to beat will be Audible, which received
a total of 19 nominations across the 26 Ambies
categories, including several nods for podcast of
the year (see below).
The Podcast Academy received a record 1,700
submissions this year, which were narrowed down
by a blue-ribbon panel of judges — who apply
every year to be part of the panel — to determine
the nominees in each category. From there, voting
opened up for the roughly 1,000 members of The
Podcast Academy, comprising professionals from
across the industry.
There are other podcast awards vying to be the
most prestigious, including the Webbys’ Signal
Awards and the Quill Podcast Awards. But Donald
Albright, chair of the academy, emphasizes that
the Ambies are among the only honors deter-
mined solely by a large group of podcast pros.
“This is about community,” he says. “If you’re in
this industry, you should want it to thrive and
be successful. We’re all making content, and we
should want that to be recognized at the high-
est level. I don’t think there’s a higher level than
your peers, who do what you do, saying that your
project warrants an award.”

INSIDE THE PODCAST OF THE YEAR NOMINEES

CHAMELEON: DESIGN MATTERS DIRECT DEPOSIT FIASCO: GAY PRIDE &

WILD BOYS
Campside Media, Sony
Music Entertainment
→ The true story of the
untrue story told by two
WITH DEBBIE MILLMAN Audible
TED Audio Collective
→ The O.G. podcast
(launched in 2005)
features interviews with
→ Tech entrepreneur
turned author Chad
Sanders — a Spike Lee
mentee and writer on Rap
THE AIDS CRISIS PREJUDICE
Audible Spotify, Gimlet Media
→ In Fiasco’s fifth season, → A comedic retelling of
journalist Leon Neyfakh the Jane Austen classic,
examines the origins of set just after the 2015 SMOOVE: STORM SANTOS. PODCAST ART: COURTESY (11)

young men who said they
were raised in the wild.
FAVORITE EPISODE? “I like
the pilot,” says host Sam
Mullins. “There’s some-
thing so classic about a
story that begins with a
couple of curious strang-
ers blowing into town.”
creators and tastemakers,
with a focus on design.
WHY A PODCAST? “It cre-
ates a uniquely intimate
atmosphere where my
guests are able to share
who they are with-
out reservation,” says
host Millman.
Sh!t — speaks with Black
luminaries about thorny
questions of wealth.
QUOTED “I just didn’t
know what it meant to
have money. I was eat-
ing the $3 knishes on
the street.” — Issa Rae,
in episode one
the AIDS epidemic. Supreme Court ruling that
WHY A PODCAST? “What legalized gay marriage.
someone sounds like when FAVORITE EPISODE?
they speak about the past “Episode eight,” says
tells you so much,” says creator Zackary Grady.
Neyfakh, “and can leave “Chris Ryan’s score (which
a mark on a listener’s was also nominated for an
consciousness in a way no Ambie) lifts everything in
other medium can.” such a beautiful way.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 46 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

‘The World Changes, But the The six-

Comedian’s Purpose Doesn’t’

episode
Team Coco
podcast
Funny
My Way
Nominated for best podcast host, J.B. Smoove explains how Funny My Way connected launched
Aug. 4 on
him to the legacy of past generations’ Black comedy titans By Cori Murray Audible.

→ If J.B Smoove had it his way, he’d cast
himself as the lead in a biopic about the late
comedian Dick Gregory. “In another world,
another life, if I was 20 years younger, I
would love to play that man,” says the Emmy-
winning actor and stand-up comic. “He really
had an amazing, fascinating life.”
Smoove (né Jerry Brooks) did a deep dive on
Gregory’s life when he narrated the six-part
Audible Originals podcast Funny My Way,
uncovering the lives of six Black comedy
legends: Gregory, Flip Wilson, Paul Mooney,
Moms Mabley, Rudy Ray Moore and Redd Foxx.
His performance has earned the Curb Your
Enthusiasm star an Ambie nomination for
best podcast host.
When Conan O’Brien — whose podcast
production juggernaut, Team Coco, developed
the show — approached him with the idea,
the veteran comedian was intrigued primar-
ily as a fan of the series’ legendary subjects.
“It’s like what Mike Tyson once said: He was a
fan of boxing. You’ve got to be a fan of boxing
to box,” Smoove says, wearing an off-white
fedora during the video call from his Los
Angeles-area home. “To me, you’ve got to
be a big fan [of comedy] to understand the
sweet science of it.” With 25 years’ experience
behind a mic, Smoove might as well have a
doctorate in funny.
As do many comics, Smoove found the pod-
cast studio a natural extension of the stage.
On his other audio show, May I Elaborate, also
produced by Team Coco, he riffs with abandon
on whatever topic crosses his quick-fire mind.
But hosting Funny My Way required Smoove
to keep his improvisatory genius in check and
stick to a script. “I have to attach my sensibili-
ties, my timing, my cadence — and cadence is
what keeps people interested,” says Smoove,
who will next appear in Mel Brooks’ star-
studded History of the World: Part II on Hulu.
To recount the lives and careers of the six
comics chronicled in Funny My Way, Smoove
drew on memories of seeing several of them
live. “I’ve seen Dick Gregory and Paul Mooney
perform on the same night at B.B. King [Blues
Club & Grill] in New York City,” he recalls. “It
was actually enlightening, funny, powerful.
There was so much strength in what they were
talking about. It made you think, it made you
laugh. It made you damn near cry sometimes
because it really set into perspective the
struggles that we’ve all had.”
Today, the former Saturday Night Live
writer stays connected with fellow comedians
largely through podcasting. (His favorites
include Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, on
which he’s appeared several times; Scam
Goddess, with Laci Mosley; and Top Billin’ with
Bill Bellamy.) Listening at home reminds
Smoove of the days when his parents went
to work and he played their albums — ones
by the likes of Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby
and Foxx.
The throughline he sees between his fam-
ily’s well-worn stand-up albums and modern
podcasts makes one thing clear for Smoove
when it comes to comedy’s staying power:
“The world changes, but the actual comedian’s
purpose doesn’t,” he says. “You’ve just got to
find a perfect place for storytelling.”

MORIARTY PINK CARD RECLAIMED: THE OUTLAW OCEAN THE PRINCE

Audible, Treefort Media
→ The 10-episode series
revisits the Sherlock
Holmes tales from the
perspective of the detec-
tive’s archnemesis.
WHY A PODCAST? “Our
goal was to captivate
listeners with a cinematic
experience in their minds,
transporting them to a
time period that would
have cost millions of
dollars to create in visual
media,” says Treefort’s
Kelly Garner.
30 for 30, Shirazad
Productions
→ A three-decade saga
about Iranian women
fighting for the freedom to
attend live soccer games.
BIGGEST CHALLENGE?
“I established numerous
channels of communi-
cation inside Iran that
changed over time to
evade surveillance,” says
creator Shima Oliaee.
“Securing the women’s
trust in the most difficult
of times was key.”
THE STORY OF
MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY
ABC Audio
→ The docuseries
recounts how Emmett
Till’s mother’s courage in
publicizing his murder
helped spark the civil
rights movement, drawing
from archival recordings
among other sources.
QUOTED “I can’t remem-
ber a day that I have
been free from the mem-
ory of Emmett’s death.”
— Mamie Till-Mobley
CBC, Los Angeles Times
→ The New York Times’ Ian
Urbina leads a seven-part
investigation of piracy,
murder and other crimes
in the lawless high seas.
FAVORITE EPISODE
“Episode seven,” says
Urbina. “It’s the most
personal and reflective
about the larger context
in which all of the stories
happen. It’s the combina-
tion of almost a decade of
reporting and it gets crys-
tallized in that episode.”
The Economist
→ Sue-Lin Wong, The
Economist’s China corre-
spondent, chronicles the
rise of Xi Jinping, China’s
all-powerful premier.
WHY A PODCAST?
“Podcasting allowed us to
embrace the ambiguous
parts of this compli-
cated story,” says Wong,
“to encourage the audi-
ence to make up their
own minds and to move
listeners in a way that is
harder in print.”

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 47 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

THE AMBIES 2023

‘The Original Mother of

the Movement’
Reclaimed: The Story of Mamie Till-Mobley, nominated for three Ambies including
podcast of the year, explores how its subject’s grief and courageous struggle helped
spur the battle for civil rights and continues to inspire
→ A podcast may not seem like the most
obvious choice to tell a story so tied in the
public imagination to one photograph. But it
proved an ideal medium to recount the efforts
of Mamie Till-Mobley to seek justice for the
horrific lynching of her 14-year-old son,
Emmett Till, at the hands of two white men
in Mississippi in 1955. The single mother’s
decision to allow the press to publish photos
of Emmett’s open casket, his face mutilated
beyond recognition, and her courageous
testimony before an all-white jury galvanized
support for the civil rights movement in the
Jim Crow South just a few months before Rosa
Parks’ act of defiance in Montgomery.
ABC Audio’s Reclaimed: The Story of Mamie
Till-Mobley, which leads the 2023 Ambie
Awards with three nominations including
podcast of the year, serves as a companion
podcast to the ABC News docuseries Let the
World See. The three episodes wove together
first-person recollections from members of
Till-Mobley’s family members, reflections
from Michelle Obama and archival recordings
of Till-Mobley herself, among other sources.
The podcast was created by an all-female
team — including senior producer Lakeia
Brown, supervising producer Suzie Liu, host
Leah Wright Rigueur and ABC Audio vp and
executive producer Liz Alesse. Notes Brown, “A
theme within the series is a mother’s love, just
the idea that she was this important figure
in the civil rights movement and she did this
courageous thing, but at the root of it, she was
a mother who lost her child.”
The audio series aired in June, well before
the release of Till, the MGM Studios film
starring Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie
Till-Mobley. The filmmaking team did not col-
laborate with the creators of the audio series,
though Alesse says the dramatized feature
“speaks to how resonant the story is.”
Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of lynched teenager Emmett Till,
delivered a speech in 1955 in Baltimore.
Narrator Wright Rigueur, an associate his-
tory professor at Johns Hopkins University
who is also nominated for best podcast host,
says the growing number of projects about
Till-Mobley keeps issues around race and
justice front and center, especially given
ongoing instances of police brutality against
Black men, many of whose mothers go on
to become visible faces of the Black Lives
Matter movement.
“People are starting to understand that
you can’t tell one story without the other,”
Wright Rigueur says. “We see the emer-
gence of an entire class of individuals that
we call ‘mothers of the movement.’ Well,
where do they come from? They come from
Mamie Till-Mobley. They’re born out of her
experience. She’s the original mother of
the movement.” — J.C.C.

BATMAN VS. BATMAN VS. BATMAN

Competing visions of Gotham City proliferate as the DC Universe extends into the podcast sphere

Clockwise from top left: Christina
Ricci (Harley Quinn & the Joker);
Jeffrey Wright and Rosario Dawson
(Batman: The Audio Adventures); and
Hasan Minhaj (Batman Unburied).
→ As James Gunn and
Peter Safran reshape the
DC Universe at Warner Bros.
Discovery, film and TV aren’t
the only mediums where the
denizens of Gotham City will
take on new lives.
Since 2021, DC has
created three podcasts fea-
turing the Caped Crusader
— all played by different
actors and all involving
wildly different storylines.
The first of the batch
was HBO Max’s Batman:
The Audio Adventures, a
scripted fiction podcast
from SNL writer Dennis
McNicholas starring Jeffrey
Wright as Batman, Rosario
Dawson as Catwoman and
John Leguizamo as the
Riddler. An homage to the
campy 1960s (and ’90s) TV
series, the podcast returned
for a second season in
October and boasted a sup-
porting cast of current and
former SNL castmembers
like Jason Sudeikis.
Last year, Spotify and
DC came out with their
own take on Batman for an
audio series penned by The
Dark Knight scribe David
S. Goyer. Starring Winston
Duke as Bruce Wayne and
Hasan Minhaj as the Riddler,
Batman Unburied took on
a decidedly darker tone,
in keeping with Warners’
recent Batman films.
Of the two, HBO Max’s
version was the only one
to earn a nomination at
the Ambies (in the sound
production and design
category), though Spotify’s
version found wide suc-
cess on its platform,
temporarily displacing
Joe Rogan on Spotify’s
top podcast chart shortly
after launch.
TILL-MOBLEY: AFRO AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS/GADO/GETTY IMAGES. PODCAST ART: COURTESY (7). WRIGHT: LLOYD BISHOP/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES.
RICCI: MICHAEL TULLBERG/FILMMAGIC. MINHAJ: MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGES FOR VANITY FAIR. DAWSON: BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR V-DAY.
This month, Spotify
returned with its latest DC
installment, Harley Quinn
& the Joker, with Christina
Ricci and Billy Magnussen
as the supervillains and
Justin Hartley as Batman.
“The thing that always
reinvigorates me and still
surprises me is the many
different interpretations
these characters can
handle,” says Peter Girardi,
executive vp at Blue Ribbon
Content and WB Animation,
which oversees all Batman
podcasts. “If we can bring
people to these characters
in a way that maybe they
hadn’t experienced before,
that’s great.” — J.C.C.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 48 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

OTHER 2023 AMBIES NOMINEES
Business Podcast History Podcast Original Score and Politics or Scriptwriting,
Music Supervision Opinion Podcast Nonfiction
An Arm and a Leg Against the Odds
Business Wars Fiasco: The AIDS Crisis Culpable Podcast (Dirt Poor Crossing the Line Erin Harper (12 Years
Robins, Dayton Cole) It’s Political With Althia Raj That Shook the World)
Lead Balloon — Public History Daily
Relations, Marketing Disgraceland Post Reports Sam Mullins
One Year: 1986 (Jake Brennan, (Chameleon: Wild Boys)
and Strategic
Communications Stories Reclaimed: The Story of Matt Beaudoin, Strict Scrutiny
Helen Molesworth
Mamie Till-Mobley Ryan Spraker, Bryce Kanzer) Teaching Texas
The Heist Season 2: (Death of an Artist)
The Wealth Vortex Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade Fed Up (Scott Velasquez) The Prince Erick Galindo,
The New Way We Work, SNAFU With Ed Helms Gay Pride & Prejudice The State of: Women Alejandro Mendoza
featuring four-part (Chris Ryan, Comedy Podcast (Ídolo: The Ballad of
Ambition Diaries miniseries Jonathon Roberts, Liz Fulton) nominee Chalino Sánchez)
Indie Podcast Production and
What’s Your Problem? Kabul Falling (Arson Fahim) Trymaine Lee, Aisha Turner,
Sound Design Isabel Angell, Max Jacobs,
With Jacob Goldstein Blind Landing Last Known Position
Josh Sirotiak (Into America)
Work Check Ghosthoney’s Dream (Deron Johnson, Chris Gibney,
Machine David Levita) Julie Larson (Batman: Rico Gagliano
The Audio Adventures) (MUBI Podcast)
Comedy Podcast Imaginary Worlds Spark & Fire (Ryan Holladay)
Randy Torres, Nancy Updike
In Those Genes Podcast Ben Milchev, Ryan Walsh, (We Were Three)
Funny Cuz It’s True Performer in
Inner West Icons David Tatasciore,
I Love a Lifetime Movie Audio Fiction Gabe Burch,
SOL Affirmations With Neely Oeftering
Society and
Scam Goddess Amin Joseph (#Matter) Culture Podcast
Karega & Felicia (Birds of Empire)
Summer in Argyle Cole Sprouse, Sarah Yarkin
The Nocturnists Randy Torres, Fiasco: The AIDS Crisis
The fckry With Leslie Jones (Borrasca, Season Two) Interview Podcast Ben Milchev, Ryan Walsh,
and Lenny Marcus David Tatasciore, Sarah Ma, Ídolo: The Ballad of
Interview Podcast Bethany Joy Lenz, nominee
Chalino Sánchez
Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! Clive Standen, Neely Oeftering (Cupid)
9 to 5ish With theSkimm Michael O’Neill Audio Up and Audible In Those Genes Podcast
Why Won’t You Date Me? (Dark Sanctum)
With Nicole Byer Design Matters With (Maejor Frequency) Into America
Debbie Millman Dominic Monaghan, Mark Henry Phillips Love Right Now
Billy Boyd, Phil LaMarr, (Marvel’s Wastelanders:
DIY Podcast Direct Deposit Lindsay Whisler (Moriarty) The Sum of Us
Doom )
Rethinking With Rory Culkin (Outliers) Truth Be Told
Allyship Is a Verb E. Scott Kelly (The Big Burn)
Adam Grant
Poetry for All Aud Andrews (The Madness Defacto Sound
The Assignment With of Chartrulean) Sports Podcast
Proud Stutter Audie Cornish (Twenty Thousand Hertz)
Cecily Strong, Eric Austin
Queer News The Lede Choosing Sides: F1
(The Story Pirates) Best Reporting
Stitch Please Why Is This Happening? Deep Left Field
The Chris Hayes Podcast Original Score and With Mike Wilner
Teddy Goes to the USSR Personal Growth Gilbert King, Kelsey Decker
Spirituality Podcast Music Supervision and (Bone Valley) Pink Card
They Knew Which Way Knowledge, Science Fiction Scriptwriting nominee
to Run Yudhijit Bhattacharjee Sports History This Week
or Tech Podcast A Slight Change of Plans (Chameleon: Scam Likely)
The Lead
Documentary Climate of Change Allyship Is a Verb Habbiba Nosheen
(Conviction: The Longest Game
Podcast In Machines We Trust Back From Broken
The Disappearance of Torched
IRL: Online Life Is Real Life How God Works Nuseiba Hasan)
Bone Valley
TED Radio Hour How to Be a Better Human John Sweeney True Crime Podcast
Collapse: Disaster in Surfside
In the Arena With (Taking on Putin)
Finding Tamika Threshold Conviction:
Leah Smart Patrick Abboud
I Will Not Grow Old Here Unexplainable (The Greatest Menace: The Disappearance
The Mel Robbins Podcast of Nuseiba Hasan
Imperfect Paradise: The Why It Matters Inside the Gay
Forgotten Revolutionary Prison Experiment) Dateline: Missing in America
Best Podcast
News Podcast Ian Urbina (The Outlaw Death of an Artist
The Greatest Menace: Host/Hostess News Podcast and Politics or Ocean Podcast)
Inside the Gay Prison Opinion Podcast nominee Queen of the Con
Experiment Collapse: Anderson Cooper (All There Stephen Grey
Disaster in Surfside Is With Anderson Cooper) (Who Killed Daphne?) The Paddlefish Caviar Heist
We Were Three
Foundering: Gilbert King, Kelsey Decker Up and Vanished —
The Amazon Story (Bone Valley) Scriptwriting, Fiction The Trial of Ryan Duke
Entertainment
Imperfect Paradise: Wrongful Conviction
Podcast Chad Sanders
C.D. Carpenter
The Sheriff (Direct Deposit)
(American Hostage)
Even the Rich Post Reports Casey Wilson (Fed Up) Wellness or
Jenny Deiker Restivo, Relationships Podcast
MUBI Podcast Ukrainecast J.B. Smoove (Funny My Way) Nathalie Chicha
Object of Sound Vice News Reports (I Hear Fear) Are You Sleeping?
Leah Wright Rigueur
Pop Paranormal What Next (Reclaimed: The Story of Travis Beacham Back From Broken
Mamie Till-Mobley) (Impact Winter)
Queue Points Chiquis and Chill
Heather McGhee Nonfiction Scriptwriting and Luke Passmore
Reality With the King (The Sum of Us) (Last Known Position) Come as You Are
True Crime Podcast nominee
Scamfluencers Mary Hamilton (Power Trip) Dear Headspace
Podcast for Kids Will Weggel, Danny Luber Navigating Narcissism
(The End Up) Room 5
A Kids Book About:
The Podcast Minhdzuy Khorami,
Mike Cabellon,
Forever Ago
Meghan O’Neill,
Million Bazillion Peter McNerney,
Lee Overtree,
Pinkalicious & Peterrific
Rachel Wenitsky,
Smash Boom Best Ned Riseley,
Mahayla Laurence,
Tai Asks Why
Alexis Simpson
The Arthur Podcast (The Story Pirates Podcast)
Wellness or Relationships
Podcast nominee

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 49 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

AWA R D S i Playbook

DIR ECT ING

‘ I Want the Audience

to Be Confronted’
Double Oscar nominee Ruben Östlund talks his darkly comic — and unapologetically
scatological — Triangle of Sadness, also an Academy Award nominee for best picture

BY B E AT R I C E V E R H O E V E N

Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund wants to make films us a much broader range and are not proud of. Harris is such a
that get people talking, and his latest — Neon’s Triangle of possibilities when it came to the sweet guy, but when he walks on
Sadness, the 2022 Palme d’Or winner, now nominated for actors. But I was really nervous to the set and he’s an actor, then
three Oscars, including best picture — did exactly that. Set when I was going to direct in he’s willing to go to a place where
on a yacht for the super-rich that sinks and leaves its guests English because I was not 100 per- he’s not beautiful at all when it
clamoring for survival on an island, the film is a social satire that also cent sure that I would catch the comes to his behavior. Harris also
happens to include a 15-minute vomit scene. nuances and capture everything is a person who is so genuine and
“I think if the audience goes to the cinema, and they want to watch a as a director. I think I’m still a true, he can’t lie. So as an actor,
Ruben Östlund film, they should be challenged,” the director tells THR. better director in the Swedish when he is pushed into a situa-
“There should be a risk involved to go to the cinema. Otherwise, the language, but I’m improving. tion where his character is lying,
audience gets bored.” Östlund, whose The Square earned a nom in 2018 you can tell that for Harris, as a
for best international film, returns to the Oscars as a directing and Where did your idea stem from person, it’s hard for him.
original screenplay nominee. He speaks with THR about his provocative for this film?

“ He’s willing to
social satire starring Harris Dickinson, Dolly de Leon and Charlbi Dean, It came from the stories that
who died in August at age 32 before the film was released globally. my wife told me. She works as

Triangle of Sadness is your and I felt that I could handle the

English-language feature film
debut. Why did you want to ven-
ture into English-language films,
and why was this the one that
made you do it?
When I was doing Force Majeure,
that film had quite a good
reputation in the U.S., [so] I was
approached by many actors and
actresses. When I was doing
The Square, I was working with
Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West,
English language, also directing,
even if it’s not my mother tongue.
And then I knew that if I’m mak-
ing a film that takes place in the
fashion world, and on a luxury
yacht, it’s really an international
setting, so there’s a possibility
to do something in the English
language without making it seem
too constructed. And with films
in the English language, you reach
a wider distribution, and it gives
a fashion photographer; she’s
from Hamburg, Germany, and
the German fashion industry is
very much located in Hamburg.
When we met, I wanted to hear
everything about the fashion
industry because I think it’s a
scary industry, but at the same
time, it’s attractive.
How did you choose Harris
Dickinson for the role of Carl? I
read you looked at more than 120
actors for the part.
For the parts of Yaya and Carl, I
don’t know how many, but 120
sounds like it makes sense. For
me, one of the scenes that I really
love with Harris is in the elevator
go to a place
where he’s
not beautiful
at all when
it comes to his
behavior.”
Östlund, on Triangle of Sadness star
Harris Dickinson
What about Dolly de Leon?
We met Dolly in the Philippines,
in Manila. The thing about Dolly’s
character, Abigail, is that when
she arrives on the island, and
when she takes control of every-
ÖSTLUND: SINA ÖSTLUND. SADNESS: COURTESY OF NEON.

when he gets so angry because
Yaya had pushed the 50 euro bill
down his shirt pocket. And he just
freaks out. He dares to explode,
he dares to be ugly. For me, it is
something that is very important
when you work with an actor —
that they can’t be vain. They have
Dolly de Leon (left) as Abigail and the late Charlbi Dean as Yaya in Neon’s Triangle of Sadness. to dare to be someone that they
thing, it’s only three scenes. She’s
going from the bottom of the
hierarchy to the top of the hierar-
chy: She arrives, she goes fishing,
and then she takes control. I
didn’t want to build the feeling
that only in the end she takes
command; I wanted her to take
command immediately. It was

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 50 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

 Ruben Östlund earned directing and original
screenplay Oscar noms for Triangle of Sadness.

Aristotle Onassis?
Every luxury yacht is kind of
expensive. I thought it was
fun with Christina O because
Christina O has such a symbolic
value. It’s the elite of the Western
world, and [a lot of people] were
spending time [on it] in the ’70s.
I thought it was a great symbol of
value to blow up in the air because
then it also has a meta layer to it.

Let’s talk about that 15-minute

vomit scene.
We built the interior of the yacht
on a gimbal. We were in the studio
when we shot the vomiting scene.
We spent nine days on this gimbal,
and the boat [set] was rocking
constantly, like for eight hours a
day. Some of the crew got sick, but
since I’m from an island [Sweden’s
Styrsö], I’m used to being on the
ocean. For me, it was complete
chaos to shoot because I was not
in control. Some of the body fluid
you see in the film is real. I will
not tell you which scenes contain
real body fluid, but one of the
actresses, Sunnyi Melles, had the
ability to provoke her own vomit-
ing. We also used rose-hip soap
and then also visual effects.

I know your next film is a social

just something with the whole
performance where I 100 percent
believed that she can take com-
mand with this group. And that’s
the reason that she got the part.
Your movie went from an isolated
set on a luxury yacht to an isolated
set on an island. What were some
of the challenges?
One of them was that the yacht
was so extremely expensive. Every
day was stressful for everybody
dealing with the production, and
then you add the pandemic on top
of that. When we were shooting
every day, we were getting closer
and closer to lockdown, and we
basically managed to get the last
day of shooting before Greece
went into lockdown. If that had
happened two days earlier, we
would not be able to finish the
film, I promise you, because we
had spent the last money we had
on renting that yacht.
Why did you want to film on
the Christina O yacht specifi-
cally, which was once owned by
satire as well. What draws you to
films like this?
The main reason I’m doing mov-
ies is because there’s something I
believe in, some idea about society,
some idea about who we are. I
want to raise these questions and
I want the audience to be con-
fronted with the questions. I love
sociology, and sociology is such a
beautiful topic because it doesn’t
put blame on the individual. It
puts the individual, the character,
in a context — and we understand
the individual’s behavior because
of that context. I think we live in
a time when we tend to put blame
on the individual, but I think it’s
the context of the situation that
changes our behavior.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 51 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

AWA R D S i Playbook
QU IZ!
How Well Do You Know the Oscar
01.
This was an early
logline for Everything
Everywhere All at Once.
A An existential nihilistic
take on superhero films.
B A kung fu flick about
generational divides.
C A movie simply about
a woman trying to do
her taxes.
D A Chinese American
family hops around the
multiverse exploring
the infinitude of
possible lives.
02.
The image on Tár’s
movie poster of Cate
Blanchett — with her
arms extended while
conducting a symphony
orchestra — was one of
a dozen sent to design-
ers, who then rotated the
photo (to foreshadow
her downfall) and added
title info. Why were they
nervous before showing it
to director Todd Field?
A The poster wasn’t all
that different from the
original art.
B Blanchett’s name
was missing.
C She has a blissful
expression on her face.
D We don’t see her face.
03. 06. 08. 09.
During the rehearsal
period for his role as
an obese gay man
with terminal heart
failure, The Whale’s
Brendan Fraser wore
heavy weights around
the house to get an
appreciation of what
it’s like to weigh more The makeup team for
than a quarter ton. The Batman reimagined
What else did he do? the Penguin (Colin Farrell)
as an old-school mobster
with a scar under one
David Lynch agreed to stand in for one of nostril in the shape of a
Hollywood’s greatest directors, John Ford — bird’s beak and skin like
who in his own grouchy, funny way offers spoiled milk. His silicone
mold was modeled after
valuable advice to a young Steven Spielberg
The star of Guillermo the combined faces
in The Fabelmans — on one condition:
del Toro’s Pinocchio is of Danny Aiello, John
the first metal 3D-printed Cazale, Bob Hoskins,
A He wanted the costume — the beat-up safari
A He became a regular at puppet. He’s capable Edward James Olmos
clothes, eye patch, everything — ahead of Overeaters Anonymous. of flashing a range of and this mug.
time to live in it for two weeks. B He remodeled his expressions. How many
B He wanted to yell “cut.” apartment above his Pinocchio faces did the A Joe Pesci
C He wanted three of his close artist friends on home to make it look animators print? B James Cagney
set to watch them film it. more like the character’s. C The McDonald’s
C Nothing, that’s it. A 1,500 Monopoly game fraud
D He wanted the lighting of Ford’s cigar to D He installed new mirrors B 2,000 figure Frank Colombo
seemingly take forever, as the protagonist that bowed out to make C 2,500 D Russian crime boss
waited in silence. him look heavier. D 3,000 Semion Mogilevich
04.
The creative team behind Top Gun: Maverick part-
nered with this military contractor to design a next-gen
hypersonic plane, the SR-72 “Darkstar,” that we see
Tom Cruise’s hotshot pilot testing in the desert when
the movie opens.
A B C D
Raytheon Northrop Lockheed Boeing
Grumman Martin
05.
The majority of the battle scenes in All Quiet on 07.
the Western Front were filmed using an Arri Mini
LF camera. The production also shot with the Sony
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever costume designer Ruth E. Carter
Venice (for night exteriors) and a RED Weapon (for
some explosions and VFX shots). Which camera wanted the Afrofuturistic funeral look for T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, to
did cinematographer James Friend choose to take convey the immensity of her loss as well as the pressure she was
audiences down into the trenches? under. She dressed Letitia Wright in an all-white hooded cape and
gave her bulky earrings that swung down, brushing her collarbones.
A ALEXA 65
B Arriflex 16SR What did the earrings resemble?
C Aaton Penelope
A B C D
D Mitchell BNC
Alloy Elephant “Killer Queen” Rhino
steel tusks bird feathers horns
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 52 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

Nominees?
10.
A B
Jean Renoir Jean Cocteau
11.
“Well, you may go to
college / You may go to
school / You may have
a pink Cadillac / But
BATMAN, ELVIS: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. TAR: COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES. TOP: COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES. PANTHER: MARVEL/©WALT DISNEY STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES/
EVERYTHING: ALLYSON RIGGS/A24 (2). LYNCH: MICHAEL KOVAC/FILMMAGIC FOR AFI. FORD: KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES. WHALE: COURTESY OF A24. PINOCCHIO, QUIET: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
don’t you be nobody’s
EVERETT COLLECTION. EO: COURTESY OF BFI. TRIANGLE: NEON/EVERETT COLLECTION. BLANCHETT: GILBERT FLORES/VARIETY VIA GETTY IMAGES. BANSHEES: SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES/
fool” when it comes to
EVERETT COLLECTION. AVATAR: WALT DISNEY STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION. EMPIRE: PARISA TAGHIZADEH/©SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION.
this Elvis fact that’s
actually a phony.
A The vocals on the film’s
classic ’50s tracks, like
“Baby Let’s Play House,”
are a blend of both
Austin Butler’s and Elvis
Presley’s voices.
B The ’68 comeback
special was meticulously
re-created, down to
exact camera moves and
lighting cues.
C Vocals in Vegas shows,
like “Can’t Help Falling in
Love,” are all Elvis.
D The production built
a to-scale replica of a
Vegas ballroom.
Whose yacht was trashed in Triangle of Sadness?
Who really inspired the Penguin’s look? Test your movie
knowledge with THR’s quiz BY C R A I G H BA R B O Z A
Polish filmmaker
Jerzy Skolimowski’s
EO takes the point
of view of a small
gray donkey, who is
sold off to strangers
and later breaks
free. The donkey’s
expressionistic
odyssey through
modern Europe
was inspired by
Au Hasard Balthazar,
the only film to leave
Skolimowski in tears.
Who was its director?
C D
Robert Bresson Agnès Varda
12.
Triangle of Sadness was filmed aboard a superyacht
once owned by this power couple.
A Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller
B Beyoncé and Jay-Z
C Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini
D Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Aristotle Onassis
13.
Can you complete this critic’s quote for Avatar:
The Way of Water? “The most expensive and elaborate
ever made.”
A “Underwater hangout movie”
B “3D sci-fi action travelogue ”
C “Auteur movie”
D “Three-hour theme park ride”
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
14.
Who provides the voice of
the animatronic raccoon
character hiding under
the chef’s hat in the Pixar
riff from Everything
Everywhere All at Once?
A Randy Newman
B Patton Oswalt
C Brad Bird
D John Kassir
15.
Which director once
described Tár’s Cate
Blanchett as the
“Bach of acting”?
A Woody Allen
B Anthony Minghella
C Todd Field
D David Fincher
53 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
16.
Name the primary
sources for the lyrical folk
theme for best picture
nominee Women Talking.
A Guitar, acoustic bass,
bells
B Cello, harpsichord,
wind chimes
C Flute, percussion,
barking dogs
D Accordion, clarinet,
drums
17.
True or false: The Irish
pub built for The
Banshees of Inisherin
that served beer to locals
who stopped by during
filming is still open for
business. After the shoot,
the town purchased it
from the production.
A True B False
18.
In Empire of Light, it
was important for the
old movie palace where
much of the film is set
to feel inviting, almost
like a refuge for the two
theater employees who
form an unlikely bond.
How did cinematographer
Roger Deakins shoot the
interior scenes?
A Instead of a regular
tungsten source, he
almost exclusively used
LED lights.
B He did long takes and
kept the camera moving.
C He used a small-format
camera with a limited
number of lenses.
D All of the above
ANSWER KEY
even warmer.
and the theater becomes
within the film unspool,
temperature as the films
to show the change in
lights. Deakins wanted
almost exclusively LED
tungsten source, he used
18 A Instead of a regular
17 B False.
bass, bells.
16 A Guitars, acoustic
Talented Mr. Ripley.
Blanchett in The
Minghella directed
15 B Anthony Minghella.
14 A Randy Newman.
Los Angeles Times.
Chang review in the
quote is from a Justin
hangout movie.” This
13 A “Underwater
(see page 50).
director Ruben Östlund
sophistication, said writer-
symbol of glamour and
yacht was an international
and ’70s, the Christina O
Onassis. During the 1960s
Onassis and Aristotle
12 D Jackie Kennedy
subtle phrasing.
Presley’s deep drawl and
Butler had to re-create
from the band, meaning
separate Presley’s voice
so it was impossible to
are mono recordings,
voices. The ’50s tracks
Butler’s and Elvis Presley’s
are a blend of Austin
“Baby Let’s Play House,”
film’s ’50s tracks, like
11 A The vocals on the
10 C Robert Bresson.
in HBO’s McMillions.
Colombo, who appeared
was partially inspired by
the Penguin’s makeup
designer Mike Marino,
Created by prosthetics
figure Frank Colombo.
Monopoly game fraud
9 C The McDonald’s
most of the puppets.
where they also made
in Portland, Oregon,
ShadowMachine studios
was shot over 14 years at
8 D 3,000. Most of the film
and Suri tribes.
warriors of Ethiopia’s Karo
paintings, inspired by the
Shuri also wore facial
7 B Elephant tusks.
like his movie home.
apartment to look more
6 B He remodeled his
x 208.3 mm x 163 mm.
dimensions are 387.8 mm
principal camera. Its
considered the film’s
The ALEXA 65 was
5 A ALEXA 65.
the fastest man alive.
the film, Cruise is called
“black” programs. In
on highly classified
Works division takes
Lockheed’s Skunk
4 C Lockheed Martin.
beat-for-beat depiction.
in Ford’s office is a
said the encounter
two weeks. Spielberg
of time to live in it for
the costume ahead
3 A Lynch wanted
2 D We don’t see her face.
New Beverly Cinema.
and Fight Club at the
a double bill of The Matrix
inspiration for Daniels was
however, an early
to do her taxes. Visually,
about a woman trying
1 C A movie simply

A Topsy-Turvy Television Winter
Preconceived notions were flipped on their heads these past few months as reviewers rallied around a video game
adaptation, Peacock piqued interest and Apple TV+ stumbled (though all hail Harrison Ford, small-screen comic MVP)
DANIEL FIENBERG With nearly
600 scripted shows to distribute
across the calendar, TV networks
and streamers haven’t made the
winter into a wasteland — but
with many of the biggest titles
saved for spring release ahead of
the May 31 Emmy eligibility dead-
line, the months of January and
February have become as topsy-
turvy as the industry itself.
The winter’s most critically
acclaimed series is a video game
adaptation; Peacock has become
an unlikely comeback kid; the
busiest TV star is Harrison Ford;
and TV fans are spending more
time obsessing over which shows
are being pulled from the digital
space than which are being added.
What we need to discuss first
is HBO’s The Last of Us — because
otherwise the winter narrative
for Warner Bros. Discovery would
center on disappearing shows
on HBO and the fact that new
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Reviews Television
CRITICS’ CONVERSATION
episodes of formerly hyped origi-
nals like The Nevers and Minx will
now be found on Tubi and Starz.
I don’t know if it’s more unlikely
that the winter’s demographic-
unifying smash (unless you’re one
of those people who took exception
to the show’s decision to dedicate
its spectacular third episode to a
gay love story) stems from a game
or that it’s a revitalization of the
recently wheel-spinning zombie
genre. Either way, Craig Mazin
and Neil Druckmann’s adapta-
tion has cemented Pedro Pascal’s
stardom, made Bella Ramsey a
household name and spawned
articles about whether mush-
rooms are actually out to kill us.
ANGIE HAN To your point about
demographics, I’ve been sur-
prised by how much I’ve enjoyed
The Last of Us as a non-gamer.
Pascal and Ramsey are lovable,
the supporting cast is exciting,
the monsters are appropriately
54
stomach-churning, and the pro-
duction values are off the charts.
But it’s that third episode, star-
ring Nick Offerman and Murray
Bartlett, that struck me as the key
to what makes this series special,
even though (or really because)
it’s a detour from the main plot.
In casting its gaze around this
ruined world, then choosing to
highlight the beauty, dignity
and humanity still within it, the
installment serves as a thesis for
the series as a whole. So power-
ful is its emotional wallop that
it reverberates across the entire
season … not unlike the way a
mushroom network might spread
its tendrils all across the globe.
It’s an early contender for one
of the best episodes of the year,
and — along with other winter
hits like Poker Face and Paul T.
Goldman — a reminder that buzz-
worthy TV isn’t limited to those
weeks before Emmy deadline.
F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
From left: Shrinking, Cunk on Earth,
The Last of Us, Paul T. Goldman and Poker Face.
FIENBERG I have no gaming con-
nection to The Last of Us either,
but the series has emerged as
an exceptional blend of peak
SHRINKING: COURTESY OF APPLE TV+. CUNK: ANDREA GAMBADORO/BBC. LAST: LIANE HENTSCHER/HBO. POKER, PAUL: EVANS VESTAL WARD/PEACOCK.
Walking Dead with the pandemic
prestige gloss of Station Eleven.
There’s still at least one more
episode-of-the-year contender to
go, featuring Storm Reid as the
latest remarkable brand-name
guest, though the last episode or
two are perhaps a little too rushed
for my taste. It’s hard to under-
state how bleak this winter would
have been for these formerly
bulletproof entities like HBO if
viewers hadn’t readily embraced
bloaters and clickers and other
malignant morels.
Speaking of bleak — that’s what
things were for Peacock, which
was more punchline than stream-
ing go-to until suddenly the
NBCUni service started 2023 with
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:
BEST ENTERTAINMENT PODCAST &
BEST SCRIPTWRITING (NON-FICTION)

SEASON 2: “ONLY IN THEATERS”

CRAZY BEAUTIFUL STORIES OF CINEMAS
GREAT AND SMALL. AND SOMETIMES BOTH.

LISTEN AND
“Atmospheric, entertaining, informative” FOLLOW ON YOUR
PREFERRED
SIGHT AND SOUND PODCAST APP
 Reviews
Television
a widely adored mystery-dramedy
(Poker Face), a compulsively
bingeable reality format (Traitors)
and a conversation-starting
hybrid (Paul T. Goldman).
I started off intrigued by Paul
T. Goldman and its mix of docu-
mentary elements and comedy,
but I ended up feeling it was
a smug example of punching
down. I didn’t need six episodes
of punishing the real Paul T.
Goldman for being delusional or
the self-congratulatory way series
creator Jason Woliner presented
his lesson-teaching mission. But
people are talking about Paul T.
Goldman, which is all you dream
of if you’re Peacock.
HAN It’s certainly been a good
stretch for Peacock. It’s not that
the service hasn’t had good shows
before — I adored We Are Lady
Parts and the late Saved by the Bell
— but I don’t know that they’ve
ever commanded so much sus-
tained attention.
Paul T. Goldman had the
advantage of coming out at a
relatively slow time for TV (what
else were people going to watch
in early January, Kaleidoscope?),
but also of being so compellingly
odd. True, it wasn’t for everyone;
I felt too queasy about Paul’s
misogyny to buy into the “every-
one just wants their story told”
messaging. But people who loved
it really loved it, and even those
like me who didn’t love it still
found it interesting enough to
keep tuning in.
Poker Face benefits from a
similar sense of confidence. Rian
Johnson’s “howcatchem,” as you
described it, wears its influ-
ences on its sleeve, most notably
Columbo. But with its ’70s visual
flair, wry sense of humor and
sprawling, star-studded collec-
tion of oddballs, Poker Face feels
completely and delightfully itself.
FIENBERG I still wish I loved Poker
Face as much as I like it, but I
appreciate the weekly cavalcade of
guest stars, Natasha Lyonne snark
and stand-alone murder hijinks.
Mostly, I give Peacock credit for
checking the comedy-drama-
reality boxes this efficiently. It
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Clockwise from top left: Velma, Extraordinary, Night Court and That ’90s Show.
gives the impression of curation,
which Peacock never had before.
Curation is hard to maintain,
even if you’re Paramount+ and
your curation is “Star Trek and
however many shows Taylor
Sheridan has time to write.”
Apple TV+, for example, had a
tremendous spring last year
(Pachinko, Severance, Slow Horses);
this winter, its output is a lot of
intriguing elements with major
caveats. Dear Edward finds Jason
Katims reuniting with Connie
Britton, but its treatment of grief
becomes one-note too often.
Hello Tomorrow! has a super lead
performance from Billy Crudup
and superb retro-futuristic
production design, but I’m not
sure what the show is. Shrinking
has some of those Ted Lasso warm
fuzzies and a rarely funnier Ford,
but the actual plot is frequently
head-scratching.
It befits the topsy-turvy nature
of this winter’s TV landscape
that a lot of my favorite recent
streaming shows have bordered
on being afterthoughts for their
services. Netflix’s The Lying Life
of Adults has scratched that Elena
Ferrante itch between seasons
of My Brilliant Friend, but is
anybody talking about it? Hulu’s
Extraordinary actually adds fresh
details to the superhero comedy
template — and stars Máiréad
Tyers, Sofia Oxenham and Luke
Rollason are having a blast — but
has needed to generate attention
mostly via word-of-mouth. Still,
at least people do seem to be find-
ing Extraordinary and even the
56
hilarious mockumentary Cunk on
Earth, which didn’t get the biggest
of Netflix pushes.
HAN Yeah, there have been some
real gems (often foreign) for those
willing to dig beyond the first
couple rows of algorithmically
determined Netflix recs. In addi-
tion to the titles you mentioned,
there’s Hirozaku Kore-eda’s
The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko
House, a drama about a home for
apprentice geisha that’s as cozy as
a warm bowl of homemade soup.
Or for those who like their auteur-
filmmaker-driven TV a little
spikier, there’s Nicolas Winding
Refn’s very Nicolas Winding
Refn-y Copenhagen Cowboy.
And, of course, Physical: 100, a
South Korean fitness competition
that’s drawn frequent compari-
sons to Squid Game, including by
the contestants themselves. In
truth, Physical: 100 is sweet —
downright heartwarming, even.
But like Squid Game, it’s a show
that seems to have broken through
in the U.S. based purely on people
talking about it to friends or on
social. That’s how I heard about it,
and I’m a TV critic whose job it is
to know what’s coming to Netflix.
Meanwhile, I’ve seen plenty of
banner ads or TV spots for HBO
Max’s obnoxious Velma or AMC’s
deadly dull Mayfair Witches. I
get it; people love Scooby-Doo
and Interview With the Vampire.
But I sometimes wish I had the
power to reallocate some of those
Shrinking billboards on Sunset to,
say, Freeridge, Netflix’s charming
On My Block spinoff.
F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
I’m not trying to crap on
franchises here. For the record, I
enjoyed Netflix’s That ’90s Show
and NBC’s Night Court — they’re
not the most ambitious shows
I’ve seen this year, but both have a
pleasant throwback vibe that goes
down easy. I just wish there were
more time and space to enjoy
all those other shows as well,
especially now that streaming
services seem to be yanking exist-
ing shows even faster than they’re
greenlighting new ones.
FIENBERG That ’90s Show and Night
Court surely are not the most
ambitious, but at least they’re
chasing nostalgia where it lives
— replicating the extremely
broad, character-driven multi-
cam rhythms of the originals
— rather than whatever it is
Velma is doing. There are occa-
sional meta laughs in Velma, but
it feels like it exists exclusively
to antagonize Newsmax pundits
who don’t actually care but feel
the need to freak out whenever
something that was once white
and straight — assuming you
were able to pretend Velma was
ever straight — ceases to be
so. That’s not the same thing
as storytelling.
Night Court also stands out
as a reminder of what January
used to look like, with broad-
cast networks rolling out fertile
midseason schedules for mass
audiences seeking middle-of-
the-road entertainment. That’s
actually exactly what ABC’s Will
Trent does. It rewrites none of
the rules of the format, but the
adaptation of the Karin Slaughter
novels has a specific location
(Atlanta), characters with a spe-
VELMA: COURTESY OF HBO MAX. EXTRAORDINARY: NATALIE SEERY/DISNEY+. NIGHT: COURTESY OF NBC. ’90S: PATRICK WYMORE/NETFLIX.
cific backstory (several grew up in
the same group home) and some
likable actors (Ramón Rodríguez,
Erika Christensen, Sonja Sohn).
If that sounds easy, watch Fox’s
inept Alert: Missing Persons Unit.
HAN Finding a time-tested for-
mula to replicate is easy; figuring
out how to make this particular
iteration of the formula stand out
amid literally hundreds of other
shows is hard. Frankly, it prob-
ably helps to drop it in the relative
doldrums of January or February.
Because if there’s one thing I can
tell about the overstuffed March
calendar just by looking at it?
We’re in for a bloodbath.
 WE MAKE THE SHOWS
THAT REMAKE OUR WORLD

OUR WORK IS PROVEN

TO OPEN EYES, MINDS, AND DIALOGUES

TWO PODCASTS NOMINATED FOR BEST POLITICS OR OPINION PODCAST FOR THE AMBIES

POPULATIONMEDIA.ORG
 THR Insider Innovators, Events, Honors
THR
Top
Schools

1 2

The 10 Best Schools in the U.S. for

Costume Design Where to learn the
latest technical skills and ‘make decisions
about what is smart and poetic’ By Cathy Whitlock 3

F or the aspiring costume designer who dreams of creating looks

for film, television, theater and concert stages, the journey typi-
cally starts with the right school, where a host of considerations
designing for the camera, while
a faculty of four professors with
five full-time costume staffers
donation to the school in 2021.
ALUMS Donna Zakowska
(The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel),
awaits. Classroom size, location, specialized classes, participation in (studio manager, draper, tailor, Jenn Rogien (Russian Doll)

FIDM: ALEX J. BERLINER. SKETCH: PAUL TAZEWELL. TISCH: COURTESY OF SUBJECT. CHIEN: RAFAEL HERNANDEZ. MIDLER: VERA ANDERSON/WIREIMAGE. USC: BRIAN FEINZIMER.
theater programs, job placement, networking with alums and, most wardrobe and stock manager)
important, tuition are all part of the equation. As schools meet the ensures highly individualized FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN
demands and technology of an ever-changing entertainment land- one-on-one guidance. & MERCHANDISING (FIDM)
scape, nothing tops a good education. TUITION BFA, $62,260; MFA, LOS ANGELES
To create its annual top 10 list of costume design schools, $36,300 FIDM’s program — which
The Hollywood Reporter consulted with costume designers and academ- ALUMS Ann Roth (White Noise), includes classes on 3D character
ics, looking at the critical factors — including class size, reputation and Daniel Orlandi (Ford v. Ferrari) design and costume aging and
alumni success — that help make each school unique. dyeing — focuses exclusively
DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL on design for film and TV. A
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE in the animated realm,” notes OF DRAMA AT YALE capstone project with local film
OF THE ARTS (CALARTS) Ellen McCartney, director of expe- NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT schools requires each participant
VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA rience design. First-year students begin with to design costumes on one stu-
“There was so much freedom TUITION BFA and MFA, $54,400 technical skills and costume his- dent film and supervise costumes
there, and they let people blos- ALUMS Bob Mackie, Edith Head, tory, while students in the final on another.
som,” says costume designer Sandra Burns (Pivoting) year create costumes for a profes- TUITION Advanced Associate
Durinda Wood (A Mighty Wind) of sional production. New courses (A.A.) in arts in film & TV design,
her experience at CalArts, which CARNEGIE MELLON SCHOOL include a class on working in the $34,875; B.A. in design, $62,790
was co-founded by Walt Disney. OF DRAMA film and TV industry with a focus ALUMS Cody Lenz (Black-ish),
New classes include an inten- PITTSBURGH on collaborative SyncOnSet soft- Marlene Stewart
sive drawing lab and Conscious Students in the conservatory ware (essential for budgeting and (Top Gun: Maverick)
Fashion History, focusing on program benefit from the chance creating digital continuity books).
LGBTQIA+, ethnic and cultural to participate in as many as 21 TUITION MFA tuition-free NYU TISCH SCHOOL
representation. Postgraduation, productions a year and classes upon acceptance, thanks to OF THE ARTS
“we are seeing more opportunity ranging from millinery to David Geffen’s $150 million NEW YORK CITY

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 58 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023


4 5
1 NYU Tisch professor Susan Hilferty (second from left), a Tony Award winner for Wicked, with
members of a third-year costume class. 2 The FIDM Museum’s 2022 Art of Costume Design in Film
exhibit showcased outfits from Oscar-nominated movies. 3 A sketch for Steven Spielberg’s West
Side Story by UNCSA and Tisch grad Paul Tazewell. 4 USC student Crystal Son created costumes
for the play we, the invisibles last year. 4 CalArts MFA costume design student Yi-Lun Chien.
With Broadway just a cab ride
away, students with a keen inter-
est in design are drawn to Tisch’s
MFA program. The recently added
individual studio workspaces, a
computer lab, library and lounge
at the school allow space for
collaboration. “I learned how to
talk about story and character
development, and make deci-
sions about what is smart and
poetic,” recalls Emmy-winning
designer Paul Tazewell (Hamilton
on Broadway) of his time there as
a graduate student.
TUITION MFA, $65,408
ALUMS Mark Bridges (The
Fabelmans), Malgosia Turzanska
(The Green Knight)
THE SAVANNAH COLLEGE
OF ART AND DESIGN (SCAD)
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
SCAD’s innovative curriculum
for 2023 prepares students for
careers in TV, film and live per-
formance and the opportunity
to work on a SCAD sitcom, Tours
and Attractions, filmed before a
live audience. The school’s first
Collaborative Experiences course
in film and TV placed students
on professional productions
shooting in Georgia’s multibil-
lion-dollar industry. SCAD also
features numerous extracurricu-
lar networking opportunities,
including the SCAD Film Festival.
“During my first year as a gradu-
ate student, I had the opportunity
to work under three-time
Oscar-winning costume designer
Sandy Powell for the Julie Taymor
film The Glorias, which was shot
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
a TV pilot pitch package. UCLA is film, we continue to expand our
also known for its designer-in- involvement with the School of
residence program, which this Filmmaking at UNCSA,” says
spring features Deborah L. Scott program co-director Bill Brewer.
(Avatar: The Way of Water). The “Our programs produce 10 to
school touts a job placement rate 15 films per year and we have
close to 100 percent. developed curriculum specific to
TUITION BFA, $13,804 (in-state), film design.” Adds Paul Tazewell,
$31,026 (out-of-state); MFA, who attended as an undergrad,
$18,136 (in-state), $33,238 “You take classes in set design,
(out-of-state) art history, art theory, and
ALUMS Rebecca Guzzi (Ratched), spend afternoons in the cos-
Ruth Araujo (Beyond Belief ) tume shop. As an artist, it was
an environment that was very
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI- encouraging of interaction with
KANSAS CITY (UMKC) other artists.”
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI TUITION B.A, $6,497 (in-state),
There are many changes afoot at $23,731 (out-of-state); MFA, $9,196
UMKC’s MFA program, begin- (in-state), $23,899 (out-of-state)
ning with new head Brandon ALUM Michelle Pflüg (Gilded Age)
R. McWilliams and a completely
in Savannah. I made the hats revised curriculum. There’s an UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN
Bette Midler wore in the film,” emphasis on digital graphic CALIFORNIA (USC)
says SCAD professor and alum skills, entrepreneurial approaches LOS ANGELES
Kátia Costa, who later worked on to the field and environmentally State-of-the-art training in sce-
The Underground Railroad. conscious practices. McWilliams nic, lighting and costume design,
TUITION BFA, $40,095; graduate notes that equal training in both combined with practical produc-
level, $41,085 costume design and production tion experience, makes the USC
ALUM Layne Brightwell (Ozark) is a top selling point, adding, “We School of Dramatic Arts an ideal
are able to focus our training on environment for learning. “The
UCLA SCHOOL OF THEATER, guiding and elevating the authen- School of Dramatic Arts’ training
FILM AND TELEVISION ticity that each of our students gives our students the opportu-
LOS ANGELES brings to the table.” nity to become multihyphenated
In-depth classes, networking TUITION No tuition cost for admit- artists, meaning students are
with a who’s who of costume ted MFA students; university fees, exposed to all facets of the pro-
professionals and a prime loca- $3,000 a year duction and design industry,”
tion with the film industry at its ALUMS Tom Houchins (Station 19), says Emily Roxworthy, dean of
back door make UCLA a magnet. Jonathan Knipscher (Dickinson) the School of Dramatic Arts. As
Under the direction of Deborah a bonus, students will have the
Nadoolman Landis and Chrisi UNIVERSITY OF opportunity to design in state-
Karvonides, students collaborate NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL of-the-art performance spaces in
with the Department of Film, OF THE ARTS (UNCSA) the school’s new Drama Center
Television & Digital Media, work- WINSTON-SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA later this year.
ing alongside scenic designers, “With an increasing number of TUITION BFA, $63,468
directors and producers to create students interested in a career in ALUM Sara Fox (Air)
BETTE MIDLER’S CDGA HONOR: ‘A GREAT COSTUME IS A SECOND SKIN’
The star will be given the Costume Designers Guild’s Distinguished Collaborator Award on Feb. 27
t the 25th Costume Designers Guild Awards Asked to name her favorite costumes of her storied
A (CDGAs) on Feb. 27 at L.A.’s Fairmont Century Plaza,
special honorees will include costume designers Deborah
career, she says, “I loved Hocus Pocus, everything I wore in
Santo Loquasto’s Hello Dolly [on Broadway], Ann Roth’s
L. Scott and Rachael M. Stanley (Sabrina the Teenage caftan for Sue Mengers in I’ll Eat You Last, and Constance
Witch, Ally McBeal); Black Panther: Wakanda Hoffman’s costumes for The Showgirl Must Go On
Forever Oscar nominee Angela Bassett, who will [Vegas residency] and Kiss My Brass [concert tour].”
receive the Spotlight Award; and Bette Midler, She also spotlights the updates that designer Sal
who will be recognized with the Distinguished Perez, a 2023 CDGA nominee, made to Winifred
Collaborator Award. Sanderson’s sumptuous dress for the actress’ return
Midler jokes with THR that the award also recog- Midler to the role in 2022’s Hocus Pocus 2: “He added spar-
nizes her “willingness to stand in front of a mirror for kling stones, a ton of hand painting, plenty of layers
hours on end! What could be more delightful?” All kidding of chiffon in very intense colors.”
aside, Midler continues, “A great costume is like a second Costume designers, adds Midler, “come with huge stores
skin; you feel as if you belong in it. It’s very freeing, because of knowledge of fabric, construction, history, psychology,
it provides so much information to the audience, and you decoration. And I respect that knowledge. They always
don’t have to work so hard.” know more than you.” — DEGEN PENER
59 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
 THR Insider
Awards
Preview
Ram Bergman’s
Tricks of the Trade
The Glass Onion
producer on his
successful creative
partnership with
Rian Johnson By Mia Galuppo
T hree years after his PGA
Awards nomination for
outstanding producer of
theatrical motion pictures for
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, Ram
Bergman has pulled off another
one for its sequel, Glass Onion.
Bergman and Johnson first
worked together on the director’s
2005 debut Brick, and two decades
later — after hits like Looper and
Star Wars: The Last Jedi made them
highly sought after — they are
now producing titles from other
emerging filmmakers under a
joint venture with their T-Street
banner and studio MRC.
The partnership’s first feature,
Fair Play, a romantic thriller
about two competing hedge
fund employees, became the
breakout at Sundance this year,
selling to Netflix for
$20 million despite
little pre-fest buzz.
Ahead of the 34th
Cruise Producers Guild of
America Awards
on Feb. 25, where the guild also
will hand out special honors to
Tom Cruise, Mindy Kaling and
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Michael De Luca and Pamela
Abdy, Bergman spoke with THR
about why no one ever has enough
money to make a movie and why
he considers himself “the luckiest
motherfucker in the world.”
How would you describe the job of
a producer to a 5-year-old?
If the 5-year-old understood the
word “initiator,” then I would say
that. I still don’t know if my kids,
who are 9 and 12, know exactly
what I’m doing — or my
mom. (Laughs.)
PGA Awards
You have been working Feb. 25
Beverly Hilton
with Rian Johnson for a
while. How do you know
when you’ve found a creative part- the movie’s going to be $1 million
ner that you want to go all in on?
First of all, I’m the luckiest
motherfucker in the world. I keep
saying there are two moments
where I knew: When we were
doing Brick, the first setup on the
first day, it was so clear to me that
[Johnson] knows what he wants
and can communicate it in a
very clear way. The next moment
was when we premiered Brick at
Glass Onion
stars (from
left) Edward
Norton,
Madelyn
Cline,
Kathryn
Hahn, Dave
Bautista,
Leslie
Odom Jr.,
Jessica
Henwick,
Kate
Hudson,
Janelle
Monáe
and Daniel
Craig.
Sundance and then-programmer
Geoffrey Gilmore said that Rian
was the best filmmaker at the
festival — most people, when
they hear that, they start believ-
ing the hype and start behaving
like it. Rian was exactly the
opposite. He didn’t buy into it, he
didn’t believe it, didn’t care about
it. He just wanted to go back to
make movies.
Johnson tells a story about how
you were the one to
crack the code to get
Brick made …
He had been trying for
seven years. Different
line producers told him
or $3 million. When I met him,
I said, “This movie is too ambi-
tious; nobody will let you make
this movie.” I said to him, “If you
want the movie to be in theaters,
you have to make it for nothing. If
the movie turns out decent, we’ll
have more options because there’s
less money on the line.” I said, “Go
make the movie for a few hundred
thousand dollars,” and he asked
me if I thought we could do it. I
said, “We’ll figure it out.”
How do you balance the cre-
ative and business ambitions of
your job?
I’ve never told Rian that he should
cut a scene or not shoot a scene.
Whether it’s on Brick or on Star
Wars, there’s never enough money
to make a movie. A movie that
Rian is writing and directing, it
has a certain value in the market.
60 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
Ram Bergman at an event for Glass Onion:
A Knives Out Mystery.
When you look at a movie like
Looper, if we can figure out a way
how to make a $25 million ver-
sion, there is no risk on the movie
[given the talent]. If the movie
turns out good, there’s a real
upside, but if the movie doesn’t
feel good, nobody’s going to lose
money. But the tricky part then
becomes how you make the movie
for the number. You just roll up
your sleeves and you work really
hard and say, “I’m not going to
compromise anything, and you
are going to find whatever cre-
ative solution you have to.”
After a run of bigger-budget fea-
tures, you were back at Sundance
with Fair Play, which became the
surprise festival breakout.
That’s a very modestly budgeted
BERGMAN: CARLOS ALVAREZ/GETTY IMAGES. CRUISE: HAN MYUNG-GU/GETTY IMAGES FOR PARAMOUNT PICTURES. GLASS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
movie. We are betting on a first-
time filmmaker [Chloe Domont].
We shot it in Belgrade and did a
few days in New York, because it
was too expensive to shoot the
[whole] movie in New York for
what it was. [Ahead of the fes-
tival,] nobody talked about this
movie, nobody knew about the
movie, but suddenly the movie
comes out of nowhere. That’s
exactly what I want. I wanted the
movie to go under the radar. So
many times people are trying to
hype movies, and that’s the worst
thing ever. You don’t want to build
expectations.
Interview edited for length
and clarity.
 Join us Live!
Sunday, February 26
5pm PT / 8pm ET

YOUTUBE.COM/NETFLIX
 THR Insider

Awards
Preview

‘I Was Only Half-Alive If

I Couldn’t’ Act Sally Field
reflects on her 60-year career
and inhabiting indelible
roles: ‘Many characters have
changed me for good’ By Tyler Coates
I didn’t happen on the scene as
a purebred,” says Sally Field.
“I was the runt of the litter.”
role on Brothers & Sisters, the latter
also earning her a SAG Award.
This year, she will receive the SAG
Having led three sitcoms by the Award for lifetime achievement,
time she was 28, she first gained an honor she confesses is most
notice as a dramatic actor in 1976’s meaningful because it comes from
Sybil, for which she earned her her “tribe.” Speaking with THR,
first Emmy and, she says, her first Field reflects on her nearly 60
chance to put her talent to good years as a working actor and the this big, huge, faceless nothing, though [others] were very vocal
use. An accomplished film lessons she has learned is treating me badly. I couldn’t about how much they didn’t want
career ensued, one that SAG Awards along the way. say that — if I said that, then me in there, that I was wasting
saw Field balancing dra- whatever power I had as a human their time. That was for a movie
Feb. 26
mas (she won Oscars for Fairmont Can you recall the moment was gone. I had to back out of called Stay Hungry I did with
lead roles in 1979’s Norma Century Plaza when you first felt like you television, and the only way that Jeff Bridges, which Bob Rafelson
Rae and 1984’s Places in had made it as an actor? I was going to make a transition directed. And then that led to
the Heart, plus a nom for her sup- I have had an unorthodox journey. is if I disappeared for a while. I me being able to audition, and
porting turn in 2012’s Lincoln) and I came from situation comedy worked at The Actors Studio with audition and audition and audi-
comedies (Smokey and the Bandit, television in the ’60s, and women Lee Strasberg for a long time, tion, for Sybil, which was the first
Steel Magnolias, Soapdish, Mrs. who started there basically died and that was the turning point. time I got to do the work that I
Doubtfire and this year’s 80 for on that territory. You were really A casting person had heard that had learned.
Brady). She has also returned to TV thought of as a second-class I wasn’t what everybody thought
multiple times, winning Emmys citizen as an actor. The tendency I was. Ultimately, it led to some- Did it feel like you had to prove
for a guest spot on ER and a lead is to say it’s unfair: The industry, body letting me in the room, even yourself as an actor?

PIXAR CREATIVE CHIEF PETE DOCTER REFLECTS ON HIS MOST MOVING CAREER MOMENTS
The three-time Oscar-winning animation vet, known for Soul, Up and more, will receive a career achievement honor at the Annie Awards

FIELD: DAVID M. BENETT/GETTY IMAGES. NORMA: 20TH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. SYBIL: COURTESY
EVERETT COLLECTION. UP: ©WALT DISNEY CO./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION. DOCTER: CHRIS PIZZELLO-POOL/GETTY
W hen Pete Docter thinks back to his
early days at Pixar, working on
Docter fondly remembers meeting a trio of
his own animation idols — Disney legends

Pete Docter’s Up (2009) won the best animated feature Oscar
and became only the second animated best picture nominee.
1995’s groundbreaking Toy Story,
he thinks of his time studying animation at
CalArts. “[It was] just a bunch of people draw-
ing, trying to do something cool,” he
says. Now a three-time Oscar win-
ner and Pixar’s chief creative officer,
Docter — along with Powerpuff Girls
creator Craig McCracken and the late
Evelyn Lambart from the National
Film Board of Canada — will receive the
Winsor McCay Award for career contributions
to animation during the 50th Annie Awards.
While speaking about his career to THR
ahead of the gala event at UCLA’s Royce Hall,
IMAGES. AVATAR: COURTESY OF 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS. YATES WHITTLE: TOMMASO BODDI/GETTY IMAGES.
Joe Grant (Dumbo) and Frank Thomas and Ollie
Johnston (two of Disney Animation’s Nine Old
Men) — and the valuable lessons he learned.
“Ollie would say, ‘Don’t draw what the
Annie character is doing; draw what they’re
Awards thinking,’ ” he says. “The reason we
Feb. 25 move to begin with is because we’re
Royce Hall feeling something inside, and the
movement then becomes an expres-
sion of that. That was such a great, succinct
way of saying, ‘Draw what they’re feeling.’ ”
Docter went on to win Oscars for Up, Soul
and Inside Out, for which Joy, the Amy Poehler-
voiced emotion, was a sizable challenge. “One

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 62 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023


Sally Field won her first Oscar in 1980 for
Norma Rae (top), playing a single mother
who organizes her co-workers to form a
union at a textile factory. She won her first
of three Emmys in 1977 for the telefilm
Sybil (bottom, with Joanne Woodward),
playing the title character who experiences
dissociative identity disorder.
I wasn’t trying to prove myself.
I learned early on, when I was
12 years old and found a stage in
the seventh grade, that was my
language with myself. I was only
half alive if I couldn’t get there
and hear my own voice in my
head. I was always looking to get
to that place where I felt alive.
of the comments we got as we were making
it — and a number of people said this in so
many words — was, ‘I really love this movie.
I hate your main character,’ ” Docter admits
with a laugh. “I think it’s because, you know,
if you’re around people who are positive and
peppy all the time, you kind of want to, you
know, punch them in the face or something.
It can be really annoying. So it was a struggle
to make that character work.
“But I think between Amy Poehler’s contri-
butions and all the animators who found the
specificity of how to make that work, it made
it really rewarding when we did land it. She’s
got a lot of quirks, but she’s still very rootable,
and [her traits are] something that everybody
could use more of in their life.”
Thinking more broadly about where
animation is today — and where it’s
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The more complicated roles I can and what they’re going through
get to, the more pieces of myself moment to moment, scene for
I could find. I grew up in a very scene. You’re not really trying to
working-class show business be somebody else; you’re actually
family, and what it taught me trying to find how you link to this
is the world of show business is artificial human and have them
not glamorous. It’s not fun, it’s come alive. You’re actually being
not easy. And chances are, you’re pieces inside yourself, maybe
going to have to struggle. unearthing something you don’t
call on very often in your own
Did you receive a piece of advice existence. You go away not know- Avatar: The Way of Water
that has stuck with you? ing quite how it has changed you,
When I started on Gidget in 1965, but something in you has been ‘WE SHOULD BE
my mother said to me, “Don’t be touched that would not have been
A BIGGER CLUB’
afraid of the camera. Go up to it, touched otherwise. Sometimes I
Gwendolyn Yates Whittle is only
look into the lens, make friends look at actors like John Wayne; did the third female recipient of the
with it, invite it into your heart.” he become that macho, very con- Motion Picture Sound Editors’
The speech was such an interest- servative, rah-rah-America-first Career Achievement Award
ing and odd thing to say. But it kind of person because he played
was true. I had to feel that [the those roles? Because that’s who hen supervising sound
camera] coming closer to me was
a good thing: “Come in, I’m safe
he was in those roles, this stoic,
emotionally distanced guy. Did it
W editor Gwendolyn
Yates Whittle accepts
with you here. I’m better with make him, or did he make them? her career achievement award
you close to me than I am when on Feb. 26 at the 70th Motion
you’re far away.” Do you have a similar relationship Picture Sound Editors’ Golden
to the characters you’ve played? Reel Awards, she’ll be only
You talk about finding yourself Many characters have changed the third woman to do so. “I’m
through acting. Does playing other me for good. Sometimes I’ll have hoping to start
people allow you to understand a déjà vu moment — I’m saying a a trend of more
yourself? line from something as if it were women getting
Acting, to me, is not about mine, but it really belongs to this more recognition,”
pretending to be other people character I played. I go, “Wait Yates Whittle Yates Whittle, who
at all. Acting is trying to create a minute, was that me? Or was worked on Avatar:
somebody that feels outside of that them? Who’s me and who’s The Way of Water (for which she
yourself. But in doing that, you them?” It kind of weaves together. received her third Oscar nomina-
have various tools that you use. It’s this self-hypnosis exercise tion) and Top Gun: Maverick, tells
[There are] exterior tools, in how you do in enveloping another THR. “There are a lot of fantastic
they look, where they come from, existence inside yourself. So, you female sound editors out there.
their physical attributes. Then know, it stays there. We should be a bigger club.”
there’s the interior of a charac- Based at Skywalker Sound
ter — you pile in their history Interview edited for length in Northern California for three
and their emotional connections and clarity. decades, Yates Whittle has
worked on more than 120 films,
including Star Wars: Episode I —
The Phantom Menace, Minority
Report, Munich, Iron Man,
heading — Docter acknowledges that Cloverfield, Jurassic World and
many still think of it as a medium for kids Fight Club. Her two previous
or for musicals and the like. “When we Academy Award nominations
push past that, it’s always fun to surprise came for James Cameron’s
Docter [audiences],” he says, remembering the original Avatar and Maverick
response to Up when many moviegoers director Joseph
found themselves in tears during the first Golden Reel Kosinski’s Tron:
Awards
10 minutes as the aging Carl (voiced by Ed Legacy; she’ll
Asner) loses his wife during the “Married Feb. 26 be reteaming
Wilshire Ebell
Life” montage. Theatre with Kosinski
“I would love to continue to push against on his upcom-
those walls, in ways hopefully that are ing Formula One racing movie.
still tapping into things that the audience Also receiving a trophy
resonates with,” he says. “It’s easy to do from MPSE during the Golden
something different just for different’s sake. Reel Awards, to be held at
It’s really hard to do something different the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, is
that still connects with people — so they Jerry Bruckheimer, who will
want to see it, but they haven’t seen it before. take home the filmmaker of the
That’s the hard part.” — CAROLYN GIARDINA year honor. — C.G.
63 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023
 93 Years of THR

Memorable moments
from a storied history

1 9788 19
97 9 1 9 80
0 1 988 1 19
9 822 199 833 1 9 84 1985 1 986 1987 1988 1989 1 9 90 19
9 91 1992 199
93 19
9 94
4 19
995 1 9 96
6 199
97 19
9 988

The Bear Roared Into Theaters 35 Years Ago

Cocaine Bear, hitting theaters Kodiak named Bart the Bear, later Oscar nomination for best film at age 23.) During a Cocaine Bear
Feb. 24 from Universal, doesn’t seen in White Fang (1991), Legends editing. It also spurred an Oscar event moderated by THR, director
mark Hollywood’s first fascina- of the Fall (1994) and The Edge campaign for Bart, who eventu- Elizabeth Banks explained that no
tion with bears, although it might (1997). Cinematographer Philippe ally made an appearance at the bears were present on set; instead,
be the only project about the Rousselot recalls the challenges 1998 ceremony with presenter performer Allan Henry played
animal’s rampage after ingesting of using real animals — the two Mike Myers. (Bart died in 2000 the bruin before being replaced
a massive amount of the titular bears could rarely be filmed with CGI. She added, “Cokey, as
drug. Taking a more naturalistic together. “The big one would we affectionately called the bear,
approach was 1988’s The Bear, have killed the small one,” he was conceived of after looking at
which told the story of an adult tells THR. “Bart was wonderfully tons of reference photos of black
bear befriending an orphaned well trained, but still unpredict- bears.” For Rousselot, who earned
cub as they flee human hunters. able and dangerous at times.” a BAFTA nom for The Bear and
Director Jean-Jacques Annaud, After a European run in 1988, lensed 2022 Idris Elba vehicle
who won the foreign-language TriStar released The Bear in North Beast with CGI lions, there is a
Oscar for 1976’s Black and White America on Oct. 27, 1989, with clear difference between working
in Color, adapted James Oliver THR’s review praising Bart for the with live animals and not. He says
Curwood’s 1916 novel The Grizzly “naked honesty to its emotions.” of Bart, “That animal stunk hor-
King for the film. Annaud consid- It connected with audiences, col- ribly — a very bad mouth hygiene
ered 50 bears as the adult grizzly, lecting $31 million domestically that no one would have tolerated
eventually casting a 1,500-pound ($76 million today), and landed an from an actor.” — RYAN GAJEWKSI
COLUMBIA PICTURES/EVERETT COLLECTION

Youk the Bear and Bart the Bear as the orphaned cub and adult grizzly in The Bear. “The leads are marvels,” declared THR’s review of the wilderness survival film, told from the bears’ point of view.

The Hollywood Reporter, Vol. CDXXIX, No. 7 (ISSN 0018-3660; USPS 247-580) is published weekly; 38 issues — two issues in April, July, October and December; three issues in February, June and September; four issues in January, March, May and August;
and five issues in November; plus 28 special issues during the year, subject to change — by The Hollywood Reporter, LLC, at 11175 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025. Periodical postage paid at Los Angeles, CA, and additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. Non-postal and military facilities, send address changes to The Hollywood Reporter, P.O. Box 125, Congers, NY 10920-0125. Under Canadian Publication Mail Agreement No. 41450540, return undeliverable
Canadian addresses to MSI, P.O. Box 2600, Mississauga, ON L4T OA8. Direct all other correspondence to The Hollywood Reporter, 11175 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025. Subscription inquiries: U.S., call toll-free (866) 525-2150.
Outside the U.S., call (845) 267-4192, or email subscriptions@hollywoodreporter.com. Copyright ©2023 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. All rights reserved. THR.com PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 64 F EBRUA RY 22, 2023

PRESENTEDBY

SPONSOREDBY
Showstoppers start at SCAD
%
99
At one of the best universities for costume design in the U.S., students from
production design to performing arts prepare for starring roles on stage, screen,
or behind the scenes. alumni employment *

Discover more at scad.edu/visit

* According to a recent study, 99% of Spring 2020 graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 10 months of graduation.