Category: Entertainment

While globally, Soho House recently completed a $2.7 billion deal to once again become a private company, domestically, the members’ club is focusing on refreshing its art. Since the brand began acquiring and curating art in 2009 at Soho House 76 Dean Street, its growing collection has become one of the biggest connection points with members, leading programming and driving interaction. Rooted in each House’s location and featuring both emerging and established artists from that city, the Soho House Art Collection has grown over 17 years to more than 11,000 works.

“It will hit 15,000 artworks in the next five years,” says Kate Bryan, Soho House chief art director. Since she joined the company in 2016, Bryan has been focused on growth, taking the collection from 2,000 pieces to where it sits today. The acquisition strategy revolves around direct relationships with artists and galleries. Once their work is selected for a House, they are invited to become a member. Bryan does not purchase art at auction; every work is owned by Soho House and stays within the collection. Her team has created a proprietary database with geographic tags (birthplace, base, education) to catalog artists for specific House openings. Now, pieces are even being loaned to major museum shows, such as the Tate’s spring/summer exhibition on Hurvin Anderson. A coffee table book is also in the works.

“Galleries are very supportive of our collection, because it’s a public showcase for the artists. It’s not disappearing off into a home that no one ever sees again,” Bryan says. “Artists come in and see their work, see people interacting with it. We use our collection. We don’t put things in storage. If we acquire it, it’s for a place and it’s going up.”

Soho House West Hollywood and Soho Beach House in Miami, both opened in 2010, recently unveiled new art that has significantly shifted their aesthetics. L.A. artist Eric Uhlir created a monumental commission for the West Hollywood club, the largest in Soho House’s history at 65 feet long and 6.5 feet high, a four-panel site-specific painting wrapping around the grand entry staircase. Uhlir is known for blending pop culture references with his love of classical painting, abstracting history, nature and contemporary visual clues onto canvases of cinematic scale.

On the opposite coast, when Soho Beach House came up for an overall design refresh, the art team took the opportunity to ask: “What story do we want to tell now?” With a curatorial focus on photography, the Miami House’s original collection has been refreshed by an international roster of artists that reflects the city’s cutting-edge spirit and place in the art world as host to its flashiest yearly gathering, Art Basel. Blue-chip and internationally known artists such as Isaac Julien, JR, Laurie Simmons and Marilyn Minter collide with niche and emerging artists such as Sarah Maple, Cornelius Tulloch, Anna Carey and Marcus Maddox, working with polaroid, performance-based imagery, collage, cameraless photography, solarisation, digital manipulation, hand-printed works, lenticular, fabric and wood-based prints. All of these Soho Beach House artists are also represented across the 32 Soho Houses worldwide. “Try and think of another city that welcomes as many people for art in a gargantuan international moment. We thought we should reflect that spirit in this collection,” she says.

While Miami’s art scene has catapulted into the pop culture stratosphere, Los Angeles has shifted from “secondary market” to global center of contemporary art, powered by film, photography, design and studio culture and arts fairs like Frieze L.A. (Feb. 26 to March 1 at Santa Monica Airport). Soho House has mirrored that rise with the art collections at its network of four L.A. properties. West Hollywood, co-curated by Kate Bryan and Anakena Paddon between 2023 and 2025, highlights artists born, based or trained in Los Angeles. The collection is anchored by blue-chip figures including Ed Ruscha, Judy Chicago and John Baldessari, alongside high-visibility contemporary names such as Walead Beshty, José Parlá and Hebru Brantley. The Luckman Club collection, installed in late 2024, features Los Angeles painters John Reagan, Erin Wright, Greg Ito, Pui Tiffany Chow and Emily Ferguson. “L.A. is now an important center for contemporary art with Frieze, major museums and so many artists having moved to town. The California art scene has always been staggeringly important, but it feels like the spotlight has come back onto it in a new way,” Bryan says. Soho House will host Frieze events at both its West Hollywood House and Holloway House throughout L.A. art week.

Bryan’s curatorial philosophy reveals how the collection comes to life. Her approach deliberately departs from the traditional gallery or museum model in favor of a more immersive, member-informed style.

“I don’t have a white box. It’s a different way of curating but one of the benefits that I have is that I’m spending so much time with the members and I can sound them out on something a year before I do it,” she says. “When we build the permanent art collection, it becomes a jumping-off point for the House. We invite the artists to come and do talks and the artists are in the Houses, because they’re part of our membership.”

In turn, that member-first approach has helped shape a collection whose influence extends well beyond the Houses themselves.

“Some of the works that were acquired at the beginning are from artists who are impossible to get work from now,” she says. “There’s so much in the early collection that is still really powerful now, and all those artists have gone on to staggering fame but it is not as if we’ve sat around going to be a star in the future. We don’t worry so much about prices rising or longevity. We think about relevance to the here and now, and artists we believe in, want to support and have around. Then, as a happy byproduct, the collection starts to have a legacy and more cultural value.”

Soho House is making other significant changes throughout its portfolio with new Houses planned in Palm Springs and Soho Ranch House Sonoma, as well as Soho Farmhouse in upstate New York and Soho Flatiron in New York City. In Europe, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon and Soho Farmhouse Tuscany will join the family. The group will open its 50th House — Soho House Tokyo in the Minami-Aoyama neighborhood — in April 2026. Soho Beach House is currently renovating its bedrooms and will debut a Soho Health Club, which will host the first international Wellness Summit across both Miami Houses. Miami Pool House adds four padel courts, a Health Club Café and an indoor-outdoor gym. Soho House West Hollywood features a new garden restaurant by Nancy Silverton. Persian restaurant Berenjak made its Los Angeles debut at Soho Warehouse. Soho House Holloway will add pickleball courts. When it opens, Soho House Los Cabos will feature club spaces, a Soho Health Club with a pool, Cecconi’s, a Sunset and Cabaret Bar and 15 bedrooms.

 

Taylor Sheridan can do it all, I guess.

Simon & Schuster revealed on Tuesday that it will publish the debut book from the Yellowstone creator, How to Not Die in Prison. Up until three years ago, Paramount owned Simon & Schuster; until recently, Paramount also had Sheridan securely under its corporate umbrella.

How to Not Die in Prison is described by the publisher as “a no bullsh*t, darkly funny survival guide to life in a maximum-security prison.” Sheridan has never been to prison — but his co-author has. How to Not Die in Prison is cowritten with “prison-hardened ex-con” Tom Nelson, and will publish on June 23, 2026.

“There is no book of rules for life in prison — until now. How to Not Die in Prison teaches readers everything they need to know to make it out alive, from how to survive a prison riot, a lockdown, a stabbing, a hit, and solitary confinement to how to get a job, not go insane, make prison ramen, give a prison tat, and (allegedly) make a shiv,” the description continues.

Sheridan’s personal association with anything close to all of that is his Jeremy Renner-starring series Mayor of Kingstown.

“You might wonder what in the world gives me the knowledge or wisdom to write a survival guide to prison,” Sheridan writes in the book’s introduction. “Well, I’ll tell you — absolutely nothing. I’ve never been to prison. But, like every man, I’ve certainly wondered how I would survive if circumstances ever put me there. That morbid curiosity sent me on a journey to understand the politics and dangers of prison. When researching for Mayor of Kingstown, I learned very quickly it’s way better to avoid going to prison than figuring out how to survive one.” 

“I wish I could’ve heeded Taylor’s advice all those years ago and read the F*cking Book, but that’s exactly the point: there was no Fucking Book to speak of because I hadn’t yet been spit out through the system and gained the knowledge that my co-author currently refers to as wisdom,” Nelson wrote. “Hey, one of us has written hit TV shows and Academy Award-nominated movies, and the other has spent much of his adult life behind bars in medium and maximum-security prisons. If that’s what makes for good wisdom and entertainment, I’ll take it.” 

DANIEL FIENBERG It’s time for another of our seasonal face-offs! This winter has given us the premiere of the Canadian hockey romance Heated Rivalry on HBO Max and the launch of the fifth season of the Canadian hockey romance Shoresy on Hulu. In between, we had action from the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, an odd rush of ice dancing programming on Netflix and more. Winter sports were big these past few months!

HBO didn’t appear to know what it had in Heated Rivalry, even though the source books by Rachel Reid came with a burgeoning fan base. The announcement of the Crave production’s HBO Max premiere came just nine days before airdate, and critics were only sent the first two episodes. That meant I reviewed it without knowing about Scott and Kip, the cottage and other highlights. Those two first episodes introduced the show’s unapologetically steamy sex, but the emotional sincerity of the love story took a little longer to reveal itself. Angie, was it a power play that HBO Max let this one develop as a word-of-mouth smash or was it just dumb puck … sorry … luck?

ANGIE HAN Can it be a bit of both? The rollout strategy suggests HBO Max was caught off guard by just how popular Heated Rivalry turned out to be — surely if they’d had an inkling, they’d have promoted the show and its stars a little bit harder — but in retrospect, I wonder if it worked in the show’s favor.

Through the (American) Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and into this year, I’ve watched the conversation evolve from, “There’s a gay hockey show?” to, “OMG, you have to watch the gay hockey show,” as friends turned each other on to this seemingly out-of-nowhere hit. The series’ initial obscurity meant fans came to it at different times, stretching the buzz way past what you’d expect from a slim six-episode run. Leads Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie went, seemingly overnight, from two dudes no one had heard of to the hottest young stars in the biz, in the sort of Cinderella story that tends to get fans personally invested in their ascents. (It also, unfortunately, seems to have sparked no small amount of parasocial toxicity, but that’s another conversation.)

People love to feel like they’ve discovered something new, especially at a time when networks can seem desperate to cram more of the same-old down our throats. More Stranger Things, several seasons after that saga ran out of creative juice? Obviously! More heavily hyped Ryan Murphy FX extravaganzas? Have two: The Beauty and Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette! More murder mysteries? More ’80s IP reboots? Peacock’s gone so far as to resurrect, for some reason, The ‘Burbs!

It’s not that those shows are bad. I’ve enjoyed many of them more than I expected to. Disney+’s Marvel spinoff Wonder Man and HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms made two giant, well-trodden franchises feel fresh again by finding the smaller, more intimate stories within them. The new Muppet Show special gave people what they wanted by just giving them the old Muppet Show back, after years of trying to reinvent the wheel.

But — to circle back to Heated Rivalry — it’s just more fun to tell your friends all about the gay hockey show no one saw coming. (Pun not intended.)

FIENBERG The toxicity within the Heated Rivalry fandom is connected to the discovery of the show. There’s no point, for example, in getting possessive about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms; it already belonged to everybody. But with Heated Rivalry, it felt like the people who had read the books got irritated with the people who discovered the show in its first weekend, and those people got annoyed at the people who only found it at the end of its run. And nearly everybody got annoyed with Saturday Night Live for making Heated Rivalry its entire personality, even bringing in Storrie as host in one of the fastest “unknown to SNL host” rises in memory. Gatekeeping is often the gateway to toxicity, and Heated Rivalry had multiple gates being vigilantly kept.

Fortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that at its best — Ilya’s Russian monologue to Shane and their shared shock at Scott’s championship “moment” made the fifth episode the peak — it was simply a very good show.

Heated Rivalry was easily the biggest wholly off-radar success (I wish the TV Academy could reconsider its rules so that Storrie and François Arnaud could at least be in the Emmy conversation). More frequently, though, my winter surprises have been confirmatory rather than revelatory. I’d already seen Mia McKenna-Bruce in the 2024 indie How to Have Sex, so Netflix’s serviceable whodunit Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials just reiterated that she’s a star worth following. I adored Derry Girls, so creator Lisa McGee’s latest Netflix offering, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast, just proved that when her dialogue is in the hands of gifted actors — Roisin Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunne all shine — she can do almost anything.

I’d put A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Wonder Man in a different sort of “pleasant surprise” category. It’s not like either show snuck up on anybody. Instead, both thrived by discarding all the fanciest trappings of their branded siblings. Knight was basically a two-hander, carried by the charm of Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell rather than dragons, exotic locations and epic mythology. Ditto Wonder Man, which worked because of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley, often forgetting entirely that it was a superhero show.

Oh, and I didn’t hate The Beauty! That was a surprise. It isn’t good, but it’s silly in better and more provocative ways than the other recent Ryan Murphy output. It’s a show that’s designed to be shocking and provocative for people who have never seen a film or TV show before, but … at least it had things on its mind.

HAN How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is enough like Derry Girls and the un-McGee-related Bad Sisters that I’ve been recommending it to people who like either, but it’s different enough that it doesn’t feel like a retread. Mysteries may be a dime a dozen on TV, but it’s rare to see one whose perspective and personality feel so fully formed from the jump or that flits between tones — it’s hilarious and tragic and dark and sweet — so nimbly.

I’ve also been suggesting people check out NBC’s The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins if they’ve enjoyed the Tina Fey-Robert Carlock constellation of sitcoms. It’s not the brightest star in that system, and the first episode is pretty rough. But it’s much improved by the second! Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe, playing a disgraced NFL player and the documentarian trying to film a project about him, are the buddy-comedy pairing you didn’t know you needed, and Erika Alexander, as Morgan’s ex-wife, is a delight as the requisite “most normal person who still isn’t all that normal” character.

Then there are returning shows. No one needs to be told at this point to watch HBO Max’s The Pitt, which is back for a second season that ought to please anyone who liked the first. But maybe they could use the reminder that HBO’s Industry remains perhaps the sharpest exploration of power, sex and money in recent memory — and that its latest outing might be its nastiest, most ambitious yet. Then there’s Peacock’s The Traitors, the fourth season of which has delivered what is sure to be one of the most satisfying scenes of TV in 2026: the banishment of Michael Rapaport.

FIENBERG You know what would have been even more satisfying than the banishment of Michael Rapaport on The Traitors? The absence of Michael Rapaport on The Traitors. Between the Rapaport of it all, the strange bullying of the socially awkward Ron Funches and a surplus of Housewives I don’t care about, this season has mostly had me looking forward to the upcoming all-normie season.

The Pitt deserves credit for meeting the hype that comes from Emmy domination and saying, “Yes, it’s possible to do this every year and deliver, just like TV shows used to!” I’ve thought this season has occasionally tried to do too much, hitting its topical targets — encroachment of AI in medicine, crippling health care costs, lingering effects of the Tree of Life tragedy in Pittsburgh — with the level of subtlety it reserves for its goriest surgeries. Man, though, I love this ensemble.

AMC’s Dark Winds, which just returned for its fourth season, offers still more proof that while brilliance is nice, reliability is underrated. Look at all the shows this winter that have either failed, or struggled, to live up to previously hyped chapters. Is anybody talking about the second season of Fallout or the fourth season of Bridgerton? Compared to the evidently successful tawdriness of His & Hers — a series that has split audiences between those who found the ending jaw-dropping and those who found it to be intelligence-insulting idiocy (I’m the latter) — the Bridgerton buzz has seemed muted, while Fallout‘s sophomore season mostly made me realize that the parts of the show I like (Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, basically) are overshadowed by what bores me.

But I’ll close with positivity. In their respective third seasons, Apple’s Shrinking still makes me cry, and Adult Swim’s Primal still astonishes with its brutal animated audacity. I loved Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson in Peacock’s uneven Ponies, endorse Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti’s scenery-chewing in Paramount+’s uneven Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and thought Patrick Dempsey’s hair looked great in Fox’s Memory of a Killer. Angie, your final takeaways from the Winter of Shane and Ilya?

HAN I could rant about how Hollywood has underestimated romance lovers, hockey lovers, Canadians and Jacob Tierney at their own peril. Or how Heated Rivalry is proof of how essential a great sex scene can be. But if we’re talking the most surprising thing I learned this season? It’s that between Shane Hollander and Bridgerton‘s Benedict, no one seems to have any idea what the hell a “cottage” is.

This story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

The U.K. government said on Tuesday that streaming services with more than 500,000 U.K. users, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, ITV’s ITVX and Channel 4’s services, will be covered by enhanced regulation by U.K. media regulator Ofcom “designed to protect audiences and improve accessibility.”

The government unveiled “secondary legislation to implement the Media Act 2024, bringing the largest, most popular VOD services in the U.K. under enhanced regulation by Ofcom,” it said. “Platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, and the public service broadcaster VOD services like ITVX and Channel 4, will be required to follow similar Ofcom content rules to those currently in place for traditional broadcasters.”

By designating the most popular streaming platforms as “tier 1” services, they will need to adhere to a new VOD standards code. “Similar to the Broadcasting Code, this will ensure that news is reported accurately and impartially and audiences are protected against harmful or offensive material,” the government said. “Audiences will be able to complain to Ofcom if they see something concerning, and Ofcom will have powers to investigate, and take action, where they consider there has been a breach of the code.”

Under a new accessibility code covering the services, they will be subject to minimum requirements for accessibility features. For example, streamers will need to ensure that at least 80 percent of their total catalogue is subtitled, 10 percent is audio-described, and 5 percent is signed.

The regulations are designed to “reflect the significant shift in how audiences choose to watch TV,” the Labour Party government said. After all, around two-thirds of U.K. households subscribe to at least one service from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+, with 85 percent of people using an on-demand service each month, compared to 67 percent who watch live TV.

“While licensed television channels must comply with Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code and accessibility requirements, such as subtitles, many of the U.K.’s most popular VOD services are not regulated to the same standard,” highlighted the government. “Some are not regulated in the U.K. at all. This poses a risk to audiences and a lack of consistency across TV and TV-like services.”

As a result, the U.K. government called its move an attempt to “create a more level regulatory playing field and ensure that U.K. audiences – particularly children and parents – can be confident that protections from harmful material are in place, whether they tune in via traditional channels or a mainstream on-demand service.”

Said Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy: “We know that the way audiences watch TV has fundamentally changed. Millions now choose to watch content on video-on-demand platforms alongside or, in the case of many young people, instead of traditional TV. The Media Act introduced vital updates to our regulatory framework, which this government is committed to implementing. By bringing the most popular video-on-demand services under enhanced regulation by Ofcom, we are strengthening protections for audiences, creating a level playing field for industry and supporting our vibrant media sector that continues to innovate and drive growth across the U.K.”

Ofcom will shortly begin a public consultation on the new standards and accessibility codes to provide an opportunity for the public and providers to set out their views on the rules.

The story of Jesus Christ has inspired countless adaptations for stages, pages, sermons and screens big and small. But since this is the year 2026, there’s a new version being readied for podcast audiences just in time for the Easter holiday.

Faith Podcast Network will debut a four-part series, The Christ, billed as “an audio epic” and “the first ever full-scale audio dramatization of Jesus’ life across four immersive episodes using cinematic-quality sound, music and performances.” It will feature more than 100 different characters and some high-profile Hollywood names toplined by Task and Emmy-nominated Ozark star Tom Pelphrey as Jesus Christ, opposite David Oyelowo as Pontius Pilot, Paul Walter Hauser as John the Baptist, Courtney Hope as Mary, mother of Jesus, Patricia Heaton as the host and John Rhys-Davies as the narrator.

The Christ comes from a creative team that includes writer and director Paul Cuschieri, co-director and producer Mark Ramsey and producer Jim Young. The Christ drops during Holy Week, with the first episode debuting on March 30. A new episode will be released each day through April 2, scheduled accordingly so that the entire series will be available by Good Friday on April 3. The official logline says The Christ will cover “the life, death and legacy of Jesus of Nazareth. Through betrayal, courage, suffering and hope, the series explores how one man’s story reshaped history — and redefined love, authority and sacrifice.”

Needless to say, it’s a tall task to step into the shoes of the most famous man who has ever lived. But Pelphrey seems to have arrived at the opportunity at just the right time in his life and career. Engaged to fellow Emmy nominee and beloved TV star Kaley Cuoco, he’s a new father who has only recently started to share more about his life off set. Long considered an actor’s actor, Pelphrey longed to stay in the space of being able to disappear into roles like his acting idol, Robert De Niro. As his profile changed, thanks to critically acclaimed turns in Ozark, Mank and Task, so did his perspective on how to engage with the public as a recognizable actor. He largely credits the shift in worldview to his sobriety, which he revealed on Instagram last October.

“12 years sober today,” he posted on Oct. 1, 2025. “Sober by the grace of God. Deeply grateful for my sobriety and the life I get to live because of it.” He wrote more words about it, but the one mentioned above — God — is most necessary for the below conversation with The Hollywood Reporter as Pelphrey opens up on the intimidation of voicing Jesus in The Christ, how some early Shakespearean acting advice from Mark Rylance came in handy while recording his first podcast series and the beauty of being able to wait for “the next thing that just lights me up.”

What was your reaction when your reps presented an opportunity to play Jesus in a new podcast?

I was so excited. Faith is such a big part of my life, and it has been for a while now. This came to be out-of-the-blue, and I was so excited to be a part of it and tell this great story.

Tell me more about your faith. How far back and how deep does it go?

I was raised Catholic, and you can still see remnants of the ashes on my forehead from [Ash Wednesday services]. But my real relationship to faith started when I got sober, and that is actually what got me sober. When people talk about sobriety, you often hear the phrase “by the grace of God.” I fully believe that to be true in my case. My life went from chaos into order. Maybe a lot of people can relate to this, but I think of my faith like the story of the prodigal son. You’ve gone astray and get beat up out there. You’re sad, scared and don’t know what to do, so you think you should go home. But instead of getting yelled at, punished or kept at arm’s length, you are received with joy. That’s how it felt for me. To now have an opportunity to be a part of telling a story about Jesus, who I believed saved my life, and for that story to possibly help someone who has felt lost, stranded, sad or scared, is deeply meaningful to me.

That was beautiful, thank you for sharing. You get the job, then comes a challenge of finding the voice of Jesus, perhaps the most famous person who has ever lived. Obviously, he sounds a bit like Tom Pelphrey, that’s why they hired you, but how did you settle on what Jesus sounds like?

I have to say that there’s a certain size to this that if I thought about it in a certain way, I would’ve been too scared to even attempt it. I’m new to voiceover work, and so regardless of the role, I was already a little intimidated. But I was also very nervous leading up to it. I felt that I shouldn’t try and do too much. And I thought that if I could add to this in any way, I should try and add what it is that I feel like I do best — try and find the most human interpretation of what Jesus is experiencing. That’s part of the power and the beauty of the story — fully God, fully man — and it was interesting to walk through the story by thinking of it more on the fully man side. For me personally, those are the moment in the story that have always touched me the most when Jesus felt and responded like a vulnerable human being.

You mentioned being nervous. How did those nerves affect you?

I knew I would be saying some of the most famous sayings in human history, and if that doesn’t intimidate you a little bit, God bless, but it intimidated me. This is a slightly different way to talk about it but when I was in college at Rutgers, we got to study at [London’s] Globe Theatre, and it was amazing. It was such an incredible juxtaposition of what we were learning with [Sanford] Meisner and the kitchen sink, and all of that. We learned to stand up tall, use your voice and project.

Mark Rylance was still the artistic director there, and he came to talk to our class. At one point, he gave us an example of performance by doing the “to be, or not to be” speech five different ways in a row. He just ripped it, like, whoa. In my mind, what got blown open was how it was this very famous Shakespeare text that is so well known and can, at times, seem inaccessible because it’s so sacred and revered, [that it] became something else. Mark said, “Make everything personal.” He taught us to know what you’re saying and live in the truth of what’s happening. It blew my mind open. To come full circle, I was nervous because [the Christ project] was this very heightened and important role based on something that everybody knows and is familiar with and there’s a presumption that it needs to be said perfectly. I just knew that I would never say it perfectly. When we were about to start, it came time to surrender to the idea that it was never going to be perfect. But what I could offer to the best of my ability was that if I put myself into it, made it personal, said it how I felt it and how it made the most sense to me, we would accomplish the best version of that.

Logistically, what was the recording process like?

We recorded for four or five days. It was really nice because the recording process allowed us to be in the room with multiple actors at once, so that was a really nice way to play scenes. All of the actors are excellent voice actors, and they are so professional and can talk about the differences between this microphone and that microphone, all of this stuff that I didn’t know about. It was amazing to be in the room with them and be able to ask questions in between takes and learn a little bit of technique. I remember when a light bulb went off when I understood how the less volume you had, the more chance there would be for dexterity within the speech.

You can cheat these things because there’s a microphone so close to you. You can literally just get right on top of the microphone and whisper if you want. It’s very powerful and becomes very dynamic. Being in the room with these other actors was so helpful for performance and to build a sense of momentum so that every word, every line wasn’t uttered in isolation in a vacuum. It allowed me to pick up technique, which I’m always trying to do with everybody I work with. What can I steal here? What can I learn here? How can I get better?

Was there something you stole that was most impactful or meaningful during the process?

Understanding how much more you can play with dynamics in terms of sound, volume and proximity to the mic. I started on stage, and there’s a certain amount of volume and projection needed for that. When you start to work in film and TV, you understand that everything is going to come sit in your lap, and you can whisper and barely move your eyes and everything will be projected. I needed to make that jump in the booth as well. That was definitely something I felt like I walked out of there with on day five that I hadn’t walked in with on day one.

What was the most challenging or most emotional scene?

The obvious answer is the entire passage on the crucifixion. That was obviously a very intense thing to try and capture sitting on a chair in a booth. We tried to get as creative as we could to try and help that feel a little more impactful, even if that meant standing during some of those efforts, or even doing something as simple as breathing. I haven’t listened to it yet to see how it turned out.

How are you with that part of your job, as in listening to or watching your performances?

The nice thing is when there’s a lot of space between when you do it and when you might get to watch it. In general, I am not in love with myself and I don’t hate myself, so it’s OK. It’s really useful if you can try and watch it somewhat objectively. You can learn and see where you can get better the next time, which is always the goal. But what happens is when you first do something, you have so much information about it in your head. If I saw a scene on Task a month later, I still remember what we ate for lunch that day or that the scene required six hours of setups. You have so much information about it that you are not able to experience it for the first time or how the audience is experiencing it. But you are able to get that feeling the more time that has gone by. I’ve never once watched myself and didn’t think that there’s a lot of good things I could learn and do better the next time. But I don’t watch it and think, oh, I’m horrible, or anything like that. I feel like I’m getting better all the time, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m excited to listen to this.

There were some challenges of being in an audio booth when you’re meant to embody something very physical, because how do you create that? There were specific things that you would never have to do in any other context. I never have to be on set and act like I’m struggling to lift something or I’m exhausted sitting on a chair. If I’m on set and they want me to do that, I can go pick the fucking thing up and start running up and down with it until I’m exhausted and having a hard time lifting it, and then they can film me doing that.

Was the decompression time after work different for this type of project?

Credit to the group of people I worked with — and this happens on a great set, too — but, honestly, every day I left in such a great mood. There are times when you work on things, and you can’t help but to feel like there’s an energy that comes and it lives in you. You can feel it. When you get to work in such a way and you’re accumulating that energy in the process of working, you release it and leave happy, even if what you worked on or released was very dark or intense or heavy. This doesn’t happen to me much anymore but when I was younger, I might leave feeling heavy. If you haven’t been able to live through or share that energy, that’s when you feel bad because you’ve cooked up something that is not yours and you weren’t able to get rid of it. It’s an energy thing.

This was also lovely because David Oyelowo is one of my good friends. The day before I was going in, I looked at the call sheet and I said to [my wife Kaley Cuoco], “David’s going to be there!” It was my first day and would be the first thing I ever recorded, and thank God it was with David because it just calmed me down and put me in such a great mood. He’s incredible. What a sweet, sweet, good, gentle, beautiful man. Paul Walter Hauser is also a buddy. He didn’t get to be there in person but he Zoomed in and I was able to say hi. It was a great group of people.

I’m doing this interview because it’s Tom Pelphrey playing Jesus, alongside other well-known actors like David Oyelowo and Paul Walter Hauser. They could’ve cast famous actors from the faith space but since it is recognizable Hollywood names, this has the potential to travel to a wider audience. Did you think about how it might circulate in the world with your involvement, and was that a motivator at all?

There are so many versions of me answering this. I love being an actor, and I will say that for a long time, I really struggled with sharing any part of myself publicly. I really tried to dance around it, partially because of how it made me nervous and partially because of all the insecurities around it. Also, I read an interview once a long time ago with a young Robert De Niro. He was one of my heroes as a young actor. He said that the more people knew about him, the harder it was for him to do his job. I must’ve read that at 17, and it burned into my brain because it’s undeniably true. As an actor like De Niro, which is the kind of actor I’ve always wanted to be, you want to disappear. You want to serve the character. But we don’t live in that world anymore. As much as Robert De Niro was able to do that back then, it’s not the world we live in now.

Sharing about sobriety and faith are so personal to me, and it means so much to me. The other thing you notice is when people are sharing things, you could say a word to a thousand people, and a thousand people hear a different version of that word. In all humility, to share something that matters to you, you first have to come to an understanding and acceptance that you’re surrendering how it’s going to be heard or what it means to anyone listening. You have no control over it. That’s been an amazing process to go through.

You’re quite new to sharing parts of your life, too.

Yes. We were talking about sobriety and the first time I ever shared, on my own, about my sobriety was in the past year. There are a million reasons for that, and part of it was that with sobriety, with faith or getting to do a podcast like this, there came the possibility that at some point, an honest sharing of any of this in whatever humble way I can could potentially help someone or make them feel less alone. That outweighed my fear of being misunderstood. It’s an amazing thing. Once the seal was broken, it felt very freeing. I’m grateful that, like you said, on some level, my participation or David and Paul’s participation would lead you to want to do an article about this. It’s wild. Also, being a dad, you start to think about everything differently.

That was beautiful, thank you. And I appreciate you sharing about your sobriety because as someone who has been a fan of your work, seeing you share about your sobriety last year led me to think of your work in a new way. I know how meaningful of an experience it is and how it changes your life. But where do you go from here? How do you follow up playing Jesus Christ?

Well, I don’t imagine that I will ever have an experience quite like that again. But I will tell you that I will do the same thing that I always do. I wait patiently for the next thing that just lights me up. Honestly, right now, I’ve been waiting for a long time but there are some things coming that I’m really excited about. That in and of itself is such a blessing. You want to talk about life-changing, 12 years ago, I was just hoping for a way to pay my rent. I’m not able to wait forever now, but I can sit back a little bit and be a dad and I don’t need to work immediately to pay my bills. I can wait for things that really move me or speak to me. The longer I am in my sobriety, the deeper I am in my faith, the more I feel that there’s a real power in trying your best in all ways to be of service. I want to be like that as an actor, too. When I read something, if I feel like I can bring something special to it or help it come to life in a very unique way, then I go for it. I felt that way when I read Task because I felt like I could be of service to something bigger than me, and that’s where I want to live these days. I don’t feel that way all the time, so I wait until I do.

What a perfect way to tend. But I do have one more quick question because looking at you, you’re giving a little bit of Jesus today with the longer hair and the beard. Have you thought about letting it grow so when the podcast drops, you sound like Jesus but look a little like him, too?

As tempting as that might seem on some level, the last thing we need anybody thinking is I’m like Jesus in any way. I am a very poor, poor, pale imitation. But Jesus is somebody I’m trying to be more like. Like we say, it’s progress, not perfection.