After getting clean, Gail Bean’s Snowfall character Wanda Bell has her sights set on the music business.
In the trailer for Snowfall spinoff, The Drop, set to premiere on Tuesday Sept. 8 on FX and Hulu, Wanda is shown proclaiming that West Coast rap “is the new gold rush; no cops, no murder”
She then goes to her cousin Lamar (Asante Blackk) and asks him to make a beat for her as the two of them try to attract volatile local rapper Artillery (Simmie “Buddy” Sims III).
And, via voiceover, as the tapes start piling up, she explains how what she witnessed with Leon and Franklin (Snowfall star Damson Idris) building their crack empire, gave her a “front-row seat to how they changed the game. We know our customers because they are our customers.”
As the trailer goes on, the tensions on the streets ratchet up as family members disapprove of Lamar getting involved with the rap game and Wanda’s threatened more than once.
And Leon suggests Wanda may be in over her head.
“I know these streets just like you,” she tells him.
“But you don’t know this gangsta business like me,” he replies.
Still she ends the preview on a high: “I’m unstoppable, baby!”
“The Drop: A Snowfall Saga follows Snowfall characters Wanda Bell (Gail Bean) and Leon Simmons (Isaiah John) as they fight to reinvent themselves in ’90s Los Angeles, where the fallout from the crack epidemic is fueling a new game: the rise of West Coast rap. Wanda starts the series driven by the clear belief that West Coast rap has the power to reshape American culture. She will work to put together a ragtag group of geniuses and lead them to the realization of all their dreams. To do it, she must navigate the dangerous overlap of music and street politics, pulling in those closest to her including her cousins Lamar Kinsey (Asante Blackk) and James Kinsey (Peyton Alex Smith), and pursuing volatile local rapper Artillery (Simmie “Buddy” Sims III), who is already in a tangle with law enforcement. Her internship with former D-boy-turned-label-owner Darryl ‘DG’ Grant (Brandon Mychal Smith) creates opportunities but also deepens tensions between Wanda and Leon, who has vowed to leave the streets for good and chase down his own atonement through his free legal clinic. As ambition, loyalty and survival collide, how much is everyone willing to risk in order to build something lasting in a world that threatens to pull them down?”
The cast also includes Mykelti Williamson, Nicki Micheaux, Isidora Goreshter, Eric Balfour, Richard Portnow, Zaire Adams, Demetrius Grosse and Quincy Chad, with Chad reprising his Snowfall role as Big Leon.
Malcolm Spellman (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bel-Air) executive produces the series from FX Productions with Snowfall EPs Dave Andron, Thomas Schlamme, Julie DeJoie, Michael London, Trevor Engelson and Paul Garnes.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter for the Snowfall finale, Andron explained crafting the narrative so Leon and Wanda, then happily married, could move forward.
“One of our guiding lights for who was going to make it out was: The people who had taken stock of the things they’d done and tried to change their lives should get to make it out,” he said, naming Leon as one of those characters. “It felt like you wanted there to be, for those people, a chance to go live a life. They get a chance to go forward and try to right the wrongs of their past. That felt important as well. Because the reality is it’s not just hopeless for everybody. But that was the guiding light for who gets a happier ending.”
Kraken parent Payward has joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and is using Claude Mythos 5 for cybersecurity.
The company said Mythos 5 will scan its systems for vulnerabilities, with findings reviewed and patched through its existing security program.
Project Glasswing gives vetted organizations access to Anthropic’s cyber-capable AI models for defensive security work.
Kraken parent company Payward has joined Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and is using Claude Mythos to hunt for security flaws.
The move follows an open letter from over 40 Bitcoin and crypto companies, including Kraken, sent last week to Anthropic, OpenAI, and other leading AI labs demanding frontier labs open trusted-access programs to qualified defenders to help guard against threats.
Payward said Monday that the company will use Mythos 5 to scan its systems for vulnerabilities, with findings sent to its security teams for review. It’s the first reported crypto company to join the project and gain access to Claude Mythos 5.
“Selection gives Payward’s security division early access to the same class of model, sharpening its ability to combat sophisticated software vulnerabilities and protect millions of customers across the globe,” Payward wrote.
Flaws found in third-party open-source software will be reported to project maintainers, the company said, adding that the approach could help protect its financial infrastructure and strengthen open-source software used across the crypto industry.
Project Glasswing is Anthropic’s cybersecurity program that gives vetted organizations access to its most capable cyber models. Launched in April and expanded in June, the program’s partners have since uncovered thousands of high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
The news comes amid growing evidence that AI models can be powerful tools for both finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. In April, Mozilla reported Anthropic’s Claude Mythos identified 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox during testing.
Last week, more than 40 Bitcoin and crypto companies, including Ark Invest, Coinbase, Block and BitGo, called on major AI labs to give qualified security researchers access to their most powerful models. Organized by the Bitcoin Policy Institute, the letter argued that developers protecting open-source financial infrastructure need access to frontier AI to find and fix vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.
“Security has always been an unfair game. An attacker needs to find one flaw. A defender has to find all of them, first, every single day,” Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said. “Frontier AI is the first thing that flips that asymmetry. A model can read every line of code the way an attacker would, at machine scale, so we find the flaw before anyone can build the exploit.”
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Cardellini stars in the Peacock series as the franchise antagonist Pamela Voorhees. The show, premiering Oct. 15 on the streamer, follows Voorhees’ life prior to the events of the first “Friday the 13th” film. It also stars William Catlett as Levon Brooks, though exact character details remain under wraps.
“I remember one of my most fun moviegoing experiences was I saw ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ on the Universal City Walk, which is a giant movie theater, at the height of its popularity, and people were screaming at the screen and throwing things,” she told me Sunday at the HBO Max Emmy Nominee Celebration event in Hollywood.
Does she predict the same for the new TV show? “This is a longer format so there’s a lot more you get to do in eight episodes,” Cardellini said. “It’s not necessarily like 90 minutes of pure horror. There’s a lot of story there. So maybe once in a while you’ll throw some things and scream.”
And possibly cover your eyes.
“It does get gory, yes, so much so that I wish sometimes they weren’t as practical as they were,” Cardellini said. “There’s a couple of gory moments on set that were very practical that were pretty gross. Blood everywhere at one point.”
Linda Cardellini teases the upcoming “Friday the 13th” prequel series, “Crystal Lake”:
“This is a longer format so there’s a lot more you get to do in eight episodes,” Cardellini said. “It’s not necessarily like 90 minutes of pure horror. There’s a lot of story there. So maybe… pic.twitter.com/NCB60HsEYq
Cardellini said most horror scripts she’s given are for characters who are running away from the killer. “Everything that I’ve ever read that was handed to me that was in that space was for the person who was being chased, not the person who was chasing everyone,” she said. “It was really fun this time to be on the other side of the knife.”
Pamela first appeared in the original “Friday the 13th” movie in 1980 as Jason’s mother. She exacts revenge on people who she believed were responsible for Jason’s drowning in 1957 at Camp Crystal Lake.
Cardellini attended the HBO Max Emmy event to celebrate her nomination for her work in “DTF St. Louis.”
It’s uncommon to meet an actor bold enough to call Ari Emanuel, the executive chairman of WME Group and one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a “prick” on the record.
But it’s also uncommon to interview an actor as unfiltered as Steve Way.
“I want an agency to whore me out,” he says. “Let’s make a ton of money together. Let’s change the world.” I joke that I’ll pass along his exact words to all the big companies. “Just get Ari on the phone,” he retorts. “Ari loves me. Except he won’t hire me.” That’s when Way mutters the p-word — under his breath for plausible deniability, but certainly still with the intention of being heard, smirking at the sound of my laughter. This is one of the last things he says to me before we wrap up our interview. A light blue Labubu that he’s clipped to his motorized wheelchair gives a wink as he rolls away.
It’s impossible to fault Way, 35, for his ire. That’s partially because it’s well delivered — he’s got 15 years of stand-up comedy under his belt — but mostly because he works in an industry that seems determined to shut out people like him. Best known for his recurring role in Ramy Youssef’s self-titled dramedy series, and now giving an impeccable supporting performance in Hulu’s “Furious,” Way has no agent or manager. “And we know why,” he says, referring to his chair, his ventilator and the muscular dystrophy diagnosis he received at age 4.
“I don’t have representation. And it’s frustrating, because I used to,” Way says. With his first agent, he got “nothing. Just nothing.” He signed with someone new, who later jumped to another agency and didn’t bring Way with him.
Left to right: Ramy Youssef, Steve Way and Bella Hadid in “Ramy” Season 3.
Courtesy of Hulu
Way spent years wondering whether he’d be able to book a project without the support of Youssef, a close friend since childhood. Then, with “Furious,” he received something actors spend their whole careers dreaming of: a role written expressly for him.
“Furious” is helmed by Elizabeth Meriwether, the writer-producer famed for creating “New Girl” and “The Dropout,” whom Way first met in 2025 when they appeared together on a WGA panel about on-screen depictions of caregiving. “I did the panel really high,” Way admits. He’d been on a stand-up tour as Youssef’s opener, and needed to relax after all the travel. “We’re going down the line talking about what we’re working on. Full resumes. And it got to me, and I was like, ‘I’m unemployed. If anyone wants to put me in their stuff, [I’ll join] gladly,’” Way recalls. Meriwether took his stoned comments to heart. “Two months later, I got an email from her people saying she wrote a part for me. That was it.”
Way stars in the series as the love interest of the serial killer played by Lola Petticrew. To everyone else, Catherine is a sociopath. But to Alden, she’s simply a kindhearted in-home health aide who perhaps has a few secrets. As she feeds and bathes him with a gentle touch and a warm gaze, he returns the favor by giving her the benefit of the doubt about her shady comings and goings. Wanting to make the most of the time he has left after learning from doctors that his health has seriously worsened, Alden later proposes to Catherine with his late mother’s engagement ring, then begins abetting her crimes.
There’s a profound sadness to the role, but “Furious” still makes plenty of room for the humor Way is known for. He applauds Meriwether for writing a disabled character who confronts his mortality but still has an identity beyond that, including a sense of humor. “When I read my first line — ‘You little slut!’ — I thought, ‘How does Liz know I would say that?” he says, smiling. “Right away, I knew that she would do the character justice.”
When Danny (Scoot McNairy), a cop, suggests that Catherine is using him, Alden is resolute. “I don’t fucking care,” he says. “You think love is only when people do everything that you want them to do. That’s fucked up.”
Way intimately understands that sentiment. “Everything is transactional. And as a disabled person, it’s very empowering to understand that. Caregiving is a two-way street. It has to be in order to work.” And the concept, in his eyes, isn’t exclusive to the relationship between disabled people and their aides. “Society has told a lot of lies about disabled people, mostly that we’re a burden. It’s not true. And to understand that is to accept that everyone, at some point in their life, receives care.”
“When you take the subway, you don’t do that alone. Someone’s driving,” Way continues. “When you get DoorDash, that’s a level of care. So when Alden says that to Scoot’s character, in a way, he’s trying to radicalize him. Like, ‘You don’t get it, man.’” Smiling, he offers a phrase borrowed from his friend Danny Kurtzman, a fellow actor-producer with muscular dystrophy. “’Disabled love is the best love.’ Because of how intimate it is. How close you have to be,” he says.
Lola Petticrew and Steve Way in “Furious.”
Courtesy of Disney
In Way’s opinion, “Alden and Catherine have the best relationship in the show: They had to get everything [uncomfortable] out of the way first and set up boundaries to make sure they could handle it. Like, ‘What’s your history with this person who’s keeping you alive? What do I do for them?’ It’s delicate, but there have to be boundaries, because it’s easy for any caregiver to get burnt out. That was really fun to figure out.”
“Furious” was everything Way would have hoped for in terms of disability accommodations, thanks to the help of an on-set accessibility coordinator. “She made sure I was OK and advocated for me when I was really in the zone. Not once did I ever feel unsafe or not taken care of. It allowed me to just focus on the character. I wanted to feel the love and trust, to find our routines. Like, how would she would shower me? But also something as delicate as: How do we sit across from each other? How do we face each other lying down in a bed?”
There were still moments when Way found himself pushing against his limits, physically. “There were some scenes that were uncomfortable — lying down for any extended period,” he says. But the discomfort was worth it to him. “I was locked in. Nothing else mattered; I just turned it off. The only thing that matters is the art that we’re operating here. That was my temporary. Yeah, the art. That’s it. The right thing for art, you know. That’s something that I realized no one can take away from me.
Before “Furious,” Way wasn’t sure if his three-season run on “Ramy” had been enough to prove his talents to the industry. “I was scared people wouldn’t take me seriously. One time could be a fluke,” he says. “But twice? I’m pretty good at this.”
Courtesy of Disney
There’s still a long road ahead. Twice, Way has worked with a studio to develop a series he would create and star in himself, but both Apple TV and NBCUniversal ultimately passed. “It’s about the inner workings of a facility for disabled people,” he says. “We want to have a full disabled cast and show what it’s like to live in one building with not enough caregivers, with an administration who has no idea what they’re doing, in a country that doesn’t treat us the best. I think a lot of people will relate to it, and they’ll see the absurdity in our day-to-day.”
Slyly, he adds, “Shoutout Netflix!” — the streamer he hopes will be his next suitor.
He’s gone through something similar with his stand-up comedy. He dreams of headlining his own tour. “It’s so hard to find accessible venues, but they’re out there. I gotta do my hour first, though,” he says. He’s already prepared — and taped — a full set he feels ready to show the world. He just hasn’t found a platform willing to help him turn it into a special. “Shoutout HBO!” he says.
It’s par for the course at this point. “I’m numb to the noes,” Way says. “Because the noes have never stopped. And that’s OK. That’s just life; it’s no one’s fault. But it’s tough, because I have these big opportunities, and I don’t trust them.” With “Furious,” he tells me, he didn’t fully believe he’d get to be on TV again until his first day on set. “So when I hear that someone is interested in my show, I’ll take a meeting, but I don’t expect anything.”
Still, he’s built more than he ever imagined for himself when he was younger. “I didn’t think I could have a career of any kind, because everyone told me I wouldn’t live long,” he says. “I almost died when I was 14, and I wasn’t supposed to live past 18. Then, when I was 25, my doctors told me I’m good. I was like, ‘Fuck! What now?’ I wasn’t good at anything besides telling jokes.”
So he keeps telling them. “The only thing that’s gonna stop me is my heart,” he says.
And he’s also starting to enjoy the effects of the opportunity Meriwether gave him in “Furious.” For the first time, Way has a publicist, which he says has been “wonderful.”
“It’s nice to respond to emails for once instead of initiating them, which is what I do every day,” Way says. Without a team behind him, the burden of seeking out the few roles available to disabled actors falls on him alone. “It’s tiring,” he says. “Espresso helps. Vodka helps. But I can’t run on that stuff forever.”
AI is also emerging as a growing threat to crypto companies, giving attackers tools to find vulnerabilities faster, automate attacks and make phishing and social-engineering campaigns more convincing. That raises the stakes for an industry already a frequent target for hackers, while fueling a race to deploy the same technology on the defensive side.
Claude Mythos 5 is Anthropic’s most advanced model for defensive cybersecurity, designed to analyze code at scale, identify vulnerabilities and help developers fix them. Access has initially been limited to organizations that operate or defend critical infrastructure, as Anthropic works on safeguards for a broader rollout.
Payward argued that crypto platforms face security challenges similar to other critical financial infrastructure. Exchanges, custody systems and settlement rails operate around the clock and can present lucrative targets for attackers.
“Security has always been an unfair game. An attacker needs to find one flaw. A defender has to find all of them, first, every single day,” Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in the release. “Frontier AI is the first thing that flips that asymmetry.”
Anthropic has said it plans to expand access to Mythos-class cybersecurity capabilities as it develops safeguards for wider use.
Read more: AI is making crypto security cheaper, faster and harder to ignore
Crypto lending is undergoing a reset as borrowers are reducing their exposure against collapsing markets. According to a report by Galaxy Research, that trend was apparent in Q2 with all categories of lending down collectively for the first time since 2022.
Total crypto-collateralized loans fell 16.78%, shedding $11.33 billion to reach $56.16 billion. Notably, the current total represents a decline of 40.13% compared with its peak of $78.69 billion, indicating the interest in borrowing has decreased significantly.
Source: Galaxy Research
DeFi shows this transition even more clearly. Outstanding loan amounts were at $21.94 billion in July after having dropped from $47.13 billion in April. Still, that trend differs greatly from 2025, when DeFi lending decreased by over 80%.
Therefore, borrowing continues to decline in phases, even amid market stress and the $200 million rsETH exploit. Therefore, the sector is deleveraging through reduced credit demand rather than widespread liquidation, leaving a smaller but more orderly lending market.
Stablecoin volume reveals lending activity
That lending contraction becomes more significant when looking at how stablecoins are actually moving through crypto markets.
With fewer outstanding loans, stablecoins have been used for an estimated $41.7 trillion in adjusted transfers on their respective exchanges for 2026, led by USD Coin [$USDC].
However, much of this movement still comes from lending and liquidity operations rather than payments. Flash loans account for approximately 65% of all $USDC volume traded on the Ethereum [ETH] blockchain.
Therefore, stablecoin trading is significantly tied to auto-borrowing transactions.
Source: Coinmetrics
Although Base exhibits similar financial uses, 68.91% come from DEX liquidity rebalancing, while 23.11% come from flash loans.
In fact, it’s worth noting that falling loan balances do not mean lending infrastructure is becoming inactive. Instead, stablecoins continue circulating heavily through short-term borrowing and liquidity strategies, even as longer-term leverage contracts.
DeFi loan demand rebounds
The bigger question is whether heavy lending activity is translating into borrowers taking on more credit. Active DeFi loans stand at $23.6 billion, showing meaningful demand remains despite the broader lending contraction.
However, nearly half sits on Aave [$AAVE], where $11.2 billion represents 47.7% of outstanding loans. This concentration means a recovery in headline lending could still rely much on activity within one protocol.
Source: Token Terminal
Encouragingly, according to Token Terminal data, average monthly lending through $AAVE has increased to $10.3 billion for the first time since it started decreasing. Yet that improvement alone does not confirm broader participation.
That being said, if borrower numbers rise alongside outstanding credit, lending demand is widening. However, with 47.7% of active loans concentrated on Aave, the recovery remains concentrated rather than equally distributed.
Final Summary
Crypto lending is deleveraging, while $USDC activity shows liquidity remains active.
BUZZ Deploys 2,016 Nvidia GPUs Under HIVE’s $350M AI Contract
HIVE Digital Technologies is deepening its push into artificial intelligence infrastructure, signing a five-year cloud services agreement that will deploy more than 2,000 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs in Canada.
The contract, secured through wholly owned subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing, carries a total value of about $350 million and is expected to contribute roughly $70 million in annualized revenue.
That would lift BUZZ HPC’s total annualized revenue to about $180 million. Roughly $35 million is already active, while another $145 million is contracted and expected to come online through the fourth quarter of 2026. The customer was described as an investment-grade enterprise but was not identified.
Nvidia Cluster Targets Large-Scale AI Workloads
BUZZ HPC will build a dedicated cluster using 2,016 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs in GB300 NVL72 systems. The deployment will also use Nvidia Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking and VAST Data storage.
The infrastructure is designed to support large-scale AI training, inference, and other enterprise workloads.
The cluster is expected to begin operating later this year at Bell’s AI Fabric facility in Merritt, British Columbia. The site runs on renewable hydroelectric power and uses closed-loop liquid cooling, eliminating ongoing water consumption for cooling.
HIVE expects total capital expenditure for the deployment to reach about $185 million. The company plans to fund the remaining deployment through previously announced financing and additional equipment debt.
AI Revenue Becomes a Larger Part of HIVE’s Strategy
HIVE will retain ownership of the Nvidia infrastructure after the contract ends, giving it the potential to extend the assets’ revenue-generating life. Once the cluster is fully deployed, HIVE expects its HPC and AI business to generate about $500,000 in daily revenue.
CEO Aydin Kilic said the agreement moves the company closer to its year-end target of $200 million in GPU cloud annualized revenue.
“The five-year term, expected stable cash flows from an investment-grade enterprise customer, and upfront deposit of approximately 10% of total contract value support an attractive economic and return profile,” Kilic said.
Executive Chairman Frank Holmes framed the expansion as part of a broader “dual-engine strategy” spanning both ASIC-based digital infrastructure and GPU-based AI computing.
HIVE says it has about 400 megawatts of capacity in Canada available for Tier III data center development, potentially supporting more than 120,000 GPUs over the next two years.
The deal highlights how crypto infrastructure companies are increasingly monetizing their power and data center expertise through longer-term AI contracts, where revenue visibility can be far greater than in mining alone.
US President Donald Trump said Iran would not make the kind of deal he believes is necessary to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Trump added that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon” and argued that rebuilding its nuclear capabilities would take a long time following previous US strikes.
Even with the same prompt, AI models do not always produce the same answer. AskAnyModel makes that difference useful by sending one prompt to as many as six models simultaneously and displaying their responses side by side.
Lifetime access is currently on sale for a one-time $39.99 (MSRP $499).
The AskAnyModel AI Pro Plan includes access to more than 50 models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Meta, and Mistral. Users can compare GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and other assistants without opening several accounts or repeatedly copying the same prompt.
Supported standard models include unlimited chats. The plan also provides 500 monthly credits for 19 premium models, plus access to a pro model with its own weekly usage allowance.
The comparison interface displays response times and token counts next to each answer. This is useful for checking research, testing code explanations, evaluating writing styles, or finding the most practical solution to a business problem.
AskAnyModel also supports unlimited image generation across compatible models without deducting premium credits.
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[This story contains major spoilers for Lanterns’ “Pilot.”]
The flash-forward that closes the Lanterns series premiere was bound to strike a familiar chord with Kyle Chandler completists. It’s reminiscent of another recent high-profile series in which one of his characters meets a prematurely shocking end. Chandler himself may have momentarily wondered whether he was being offered another Mayor of Kingstown-type opportunity. But showrunner Chris Mundy, together with co-creators Damon Lindelof and Tom King, quickly reassured him that this particular twist would more closely resemble the storytelling of Bloodline, the earlier series Mundy and Chandler had worked on together.
The pilot — directed by James Hawes and co-written by Mundy, Lindelof, and King — establishes the DC/HBO series’ multi-timeline structure. It introduces childhood flashbacks, a primary timeline set in 2016 and a future 2026 timeline, one where Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Rushville, Nebraska sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald) investigate the murder of Chandler’s Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, on the same high-school football field where the three of them had worked another murder case a decade earlier. Like Bloodline’s own inciting murder, this series will gradually catch the audience up to speed as to how the ring-powered space cop wound up catching a bullet.
For Chandler, the bigger challenge was block-shooting a nonlinear series without having all the scripts available at first. If you’re unfamiliar with shooting in blocks, it’s basically when a production films multiple episodes at the same time in order to shoot out a location.
“The full storyline wasn’t in front of us; it was described to us. [Block-shooting] required a lot of faith and trust in the storyline,” Chandler tells The Hollywood Reporter. “As far as the way they started it out [with Hal’s death], I thought it was a clever way of doing it and making it a non-linear story. I like the way it came out. It gave us a chance to set up our own traps and to go against the material sometimes to reveal more, or less, later. So it’s like 3D chess.”
Pierre, who’s already reprised the role of his aspiring Green Lantern in DCU architect James Gunn’s upcoming Man of Tomorrow, advanced through 2024’s audition process as his performance in Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge was earning rave reviews. Yet unlike his fearless Green Lantern trainee, he still felt considerable apprehension just as his career was taking flight.
“I immediately recognized the enormity of the opportunity and the gift that it is to engage with, first and foremost, this character and this world. And being the first live-action [John Stewart] is also something that I recognize the magnitude of,” Pierre says. “So it was very nerve-wracking, but I have a history and a habit of intentionally seeking out things that unnerve me.”
Having never worked in the comic-book genre before, Chandler was surprised to find himself cast as a superhero at 60. So he soon became aware of the pressure to satisfy an already passionate fanbase with sky-high expectations.
“Before I went to [San Diego] Comic-Con, a lot of people were saying, ‘Well, what are the true aficionados going to think of your presentation? You better do a good job.’ Luckily, I don’t pay attention to any of that. I don’t go on any of these web sites and read any of that stuff, so they can call me what they want and I won’t know,” Chandler shares. “But there was a little [concern of], How am I going to do this to please people? Then I finally realized, I can’t please anyone, so I have to do it myself. That gave me the freedom to be myself, and that gave me the freedom to make it as raw as I wanted it to be. Damn the torpedoes, let’s see what happens.”
It’s a particularly strange time for the superhero industrial complex’s endeavors on TV and streaming platforms. One day, an acclaimed, Emmy-nominated series can be renewed, and the next day, it can be inexplicably un-renewed. At this current juncture, Mundy and Halt and Catch Fire co-creator Christopher Cantwell are provisionally breaking story in the season two writers room, but neither Chandler nor Pierre are getting ahead of themselves until they officially get the green light from the studio/network.
“Whatever happens will happen. Whatever is meant to be will be,” Pierre says. “Of course, we would love to go again and again. We love this show. All of us poured so much into this that, whatever happens, we are at peace with it because we are just all so very proud of it.”
Below, during a conversation with THR, Pierre also discusses how he balanced the contrast between John’s calm external presentation and his inner turmoil from childhood.
***
Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan in Lanterns
Courtesy of HBO
Aaron and Kyle, Kyle and Aaron …
AARON PIERRE You were right the first time.
(Pierre and Kyle Chandler laugh. They’d already been ribbing each other prior to the start of this interview.)
KYLE CHANDLER (Joking about Pierre’s physical advantage over him.) This guy is actually sitting on two phonebooks right now. That’s how little he is. He’s nervous for this interview.
PIERRE (Laughing and pointing to his upper body.) I’ve also got padding in here.
Kyle, I’ve been watching you since the days when a cat delivered your newspaper a day early on Early Edition, and that ordinary guy with a head start on tomorrow’s news was probably the closest you’ve come to playing a superhero. But is it safe to say that you never expected a bona fide superhero like Hal Jordan to come your way?
CHANDLER It’s very safe to assume that, yeah. It’s safe to assume that I didn’t expect a script to come — and the likes of James Gunn and these guys [co-creators Chris Mundy, Tom King, Damon Lindelof] to ask if I wanted to be the Green Lantern. I was like, “Oh, I’m interested to read this.” And when I got done reading it, I realized, It is the Green Lantern, but it’s so much more. The script was so rich with opportunities to do so much more, and I saw that immediately.
The writers based Hal on Chuck Yeager, including Sam Shepard’s Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Sam happened to play your father on Bloodline, so did that aspect tip the scales for you at all?
CHANDLER That wasn’t a consideration. The one thing that was a consideration was that I only now understand the intensity of these comic book universes: DC, Marvel and all the others. I went to my first Comic-Con recently, and I realize it now. Before I went to [San Diego] Comic-Con, a lot of people were saying, “Well, what are the true aficionados going to think of your presentation? You better do a good job.” Luckily, I don’t pay attention to any of that. I don’t have any social media. I don’t go on any of these web sites and read any of that stuff, so they can call me what they want and I won’t know. But there was a little [concern of], How am I going to do this to please people? Then I finally realized, I can’t please anyone, so I have to do it myself. That gave me the freedom to be myself, and that gave me the freedom to make it as raw as I wanted it to be. Damn the torpedoes, let’s see what happens. So it was a really enjoyable process.
Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan in Lanterns
Courtesy of HBO
Aaron, Lanterns have to be fearless in order to get the job, but actors tell me all the time that the roles they want most are the ones that scare them. So what frightened you the most about this particular part?
PIERRE The enormity of it. I immediately recognized the enormity of the opportunity and the gift that it is to engage with, first and foremost, this character and this world. And being the first live-action [John Stewart] is also something that I recognize the magnitude of. So it was very nerve-wracking going into the audition process and the final callback, et cetera. But I have a history and a habit of intentionally seeking out things that unnerve me, especially as it relates to my career. I just got done doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on the main stage at the Old Vic in London, and that terrified me. [Writer’s Note: Pierre played McMurphy.]
CHANDLER (Laughs.) When you told me that, I was like, “Are you crazy?”
PIERRE (Laughs.) You were terrified on my behalf. That’s the same stage that heroes of mine have been on — James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave. So I just have a tendency to go toward that because that’s where evolution and growth are. So Kyle and I share that sentiment with a lot of the work that we choose to do.
I never thought applesauce could be a source of trauma, but here we are.
PIERRE (Laughs.)
I’m honestly amazed by John’s composure considering his uniquely abusive childhood. How did you approach the psychology of someone who’s so composed despite going through all of that?
PIERRE Oh brother, I love that question. That is such a great question. I really worked extensively on that particular element of John’s character. The question I would ask myself is: How do you make an interesting portrayal of somebody who is seemingly as cool as an ocean breeze, but internally, there is a tornado going on? And that’s something that I wrestled with throughout the process. I actually think the process of wrestling with it leaked into the character, and it’s what we get to see on the screen. It was so enjoyable. I love the opportunity and the gift to portray complex characters, as all of us are. When we have a lot of things going on, how do we manage and navigate that? So it was a joy and a privilege to portray John.
Kyle, at the end of the pilot, I was briefly worried that you’d been Mayor of Kingstown’d again, but then I realized you’d actually been Danny Rayburn’d (Bloodline). The established multi-timeline will explore how Hal ended up on those bleachers in 2026. When you first learned of Hal’s death at the end of the series premiere, how did that first conversation go considering you recently died in another pilot?
CHANDLER I asked the same question when I read the script. We block-shot this [season], and the scripts didn’t all come out until we had already started shooting. So the full storyline wasn’t in front of us; it was described to us. That made it difficult to block-shoot eight episodes of which you don’t have all eight episodes [in script form]. It required a lot of faith and trust in the storyline. As far as the way they started it out, I thought it was a clever way of doing it and making it a non-linear story. The way they stacked the cards at the end, it gave the editors a heyday to create new storylines or break storylines down or what have you. So, creatively, I think it was, for them, a joy. And yeah, I like the way it came out. It gave us a chance to set up our own traps and to go against the material sometimes to reveal more, or less, later. So it’s like 3D chess.
[Writer’s Note: I also asked Lanterns showrunner Chris Mundy about whether Kyle voiced any initial concern until he heard the grand plan.]
CHRIS MUNDY Kyle never mentioned [Mayor of Kingstown] or any concern. It was baked into what we were doing from the beginning, and it was just always part of what we were going to be doing. And Kyle knew. There’s a real freedom in that because we were all on the same page.
Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart and Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan in Lanterns
John P. Johnson/HBO
The writing of season two is already underway in the event of renewal. Are you guys feeling optimistic?
CHANDLER I am very optimistic. I gave them my first two versions of scripts one and two, along with a packet of cash.
PIERRE (Laughs.) Honestly, this was such a joy from beginning to end. Kyle and I speak often about the fact that maybe 15 percent of this season, maybe even less, was shot on the WB lot. The other 85 or 90 percent of it was shot on location, so we became a real traveling company. We became such a unit and such a team. Whatever happens will happen. Whatever is meant to be will be. Of course, we would love to go again and again. We love this show. All of us poured so much into this that, whatever happens, we are at peace with it because we are just all so very proud of it. The whole team, such as Jeff [Ferrero] in lighting, got so close. It’s a real family, and it was a real family effort. Kyle and I, along with a number of other amazing artists, are front-facing in regards to this project. But there is a town behind us, and we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this without them, not even close.
CHANDLER What he says is so true.
*** Lanterns is now airing new episodes on HBO/HBO Max every Sunday until Oct 4.
