BAFTA has officially apologized to Sinners stars and BAFTA nominees Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo for the unintentional racial slur they endured while presenting at Sunday night’s awards ceremony. John Davidson, who has Tourette’s syndrome, yelled out the n-word along with other involuntary outbursts while attending as an executive producer in support of Kirk Jones’ BAFTA-nominated I Swear, a film inspired by Davidson’s own journey with the condition.
Awareness around Tourette’s shifted much of the public conversation away from BAFTA’s failure to edit the incident from the taped broadcast — the version most viewers saw — and its slow response in apologizing to Jordan and Lindo. It’s a blind spot that feels particularly glaring given the moment: The U.K. film industry’s struggles with racial insensitivity are at the center of Dreaming Whilst Black, now streaming its second season on Showtime on Paramount+.
The series stars co-creator Adjani Salmon as Kwabena, a Black British Jamaican filmmaker trying to make it in an industry that wasn’t built for him. In her review of the series’ first season in 2023 for THR, Angie Han noted that “the road to making it is a rocky one for any novice — and, as the title hints, even more so for Black artists trying to forge ahead in an industry still dominated by white people.”
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Salmon traces the project back to 2016, when it began as a web series. “[It] was born from a frustration of trying to find a way into the industry,” he says. “At the time, web series content was kinda at its apex in the sense that Insecure came out around that time. It felt like the new wave.”
Taking cues from Issa Rae’s path to HBO and Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, Salmon and his collaborators built Dreaming Whilst Black around a character with a similarly dual focus: his career and his life. In the first season, Kwabena is stuck working as a recruitment officer and gig economy delivery driver while dreaming of making Jamaica Road, a film inspired by the Windrush Generation — including his own grandparents, who left Jamaica for the U.K. in search of greater opportunity. Alongside him are film school friend and producer Amy (Dani Moseley), cousin and surrogate brother Maurice (Demmy Ladipo), Maurice’s pregnant wife, Funmi (Rachel Adedeji), and Vanessa (Babirye Bukilwa), the more financially stable woman who becomes his girlfriend.
For the second season — which ran last year in the U.K. but began streaming the first of six episodes in the U.S. on Paramount+ on Friday, Kwabena lands a job working on a “color-blind” historical drama that feels like his big break. As the series progresses, he finds that, even from the inside, the industry does not welcome his voice.
The latter is a sentiment, some argue, that BAFTA echoed in its failure to acknowledge the harm Jordan and Lindo experienced in that moment. “If season one is about the Black glass ceiling,” says Salmon, “season two is about the glass cliff.”
To those unfamiliar with “the glass cliff,” Salmon explains it as a technical term referring to “structural inequality disguised as personal feeling.” The societal critiques in the series are inspired by Salmon falling down a “rabbit hole” of books about social injustice and inequality that include writers and scholars from the U.S., Kenya and Great Britain, like bell hooks, Kenyan Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Stuart Hall.
In tackling the challenges Black filmmakers and others face for Dreaming Whilst Black, Salmon stresses that “we don’t want to re-traumatize [because] these are people’s lives. The things that we go through happen to people. So it’s really about getting the balance right of sharing our reality.”
That balance, he adds, comes from a place of love: “We try to dedicate the work to our community so that, even when we’re having these conversations that feel sad, they still feel heard.”
Despite the challenges, Salmon — himself a BAFTA winner who also received two nominations for Dreaming Whilst Black — sees genuine progress. “When I started in the industry, I didn’t really see many of us at all,” he says. “And now I’m seeing far more of us, maybe not as much as I would want, but it’s more than last time. But I would love for us to get to a place [of] normalization. Obviously Dreaming Whilst Black exists, [but] we heavily lean into the experience of being Black.”
What he hopes for next is something closer to normalization: Black British filmmakers achieving what producers like Will Packer have built in the U.S., or what British Nigerian filmmaker Rapman has done with Netflix’s Supacell.
“That is progress, more of that. Just people with powers who so happen to be Black,” he says. “Just more intentionality with our everydayness. That’s what I would love to see now.”
The first season of Dreaming Whilst Black is streaming on Showtime on Paramount+ with episodes of season two dropping every Friday until March 27.
In a way, Quentin Tarantino‘s viral criticism of Matthew Lillard was a good thing for the Five Nights at Freddy’s actor. It was only in the wake of the director’s harsh comments that Lillard was able to realize how appreciated he is by both his fans and others in the industry.
But first, he had to go through a bit of hell.
As a refresher, Tarantino said on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast back in December that Lillard was on a list of actors he said he didn’t care for. Speaking initially about Paul Dano, Tarantino said, “I’m not saying he’s giving a terrible performance. I’m saying he’s giving a non-entity [performance]. I don’t care for him. I don’t care for Owen Wilson, I don’t care for Matthew Lillard.”
In a new interview with People, Lillard says, “It felt like I had died and was in heaven watching everyone send out their RIP tweets. I mean, it was really being a part of your own wake, sort of sitting there living through all the nice things people say after you die.”
“Everyone, from the people at the mall this weekend with my kids to George Clooney and James Gunn and Mike Flanagan, I mean, people have sort of been really generous with telling me how much they loved me and liked my work,” Lillard continued.
Gunn posted on social media, calling Lillard “one of my favorite guys (and actors).” Clooney said he would be honored to work with any of the actors Tarantino criticized. Flanagan — who has cast Lillard on multiple films — gave a full-throated defense of the actor, calling him “the goddamn greatest.”
Lillard added that Tarantino’s comments especially hurt because he would “love” to be in one of his films. “I think he’s a lovely filmmaker, and to just sort of get punched in the mouth just was kind of a bummer.”
Lillard initially responded to the comments at GalaxyCon Columbus, saying, “Eh, whatever. Who gives a shit. The point is that it hurts your feelings. It fucking sucks. And you wouldn’t say that to Tom Cruise. You wouldn’t say that to somebody who’s a top-line actor in Hollywood.”
Lillard next appears in Scream 7, reprising his role from the franchise’s first film.
By the third season of Netflix’s The Night Agent, Gabriel Basso is used to filming on location. The production has traveled from Washington D.C. to Vancouver, to New York and Bangkok; in the latest season, which dropped on the streaming platform Feb. 19, Basso and the crew went to Istanbul to film the first episode. “I was always on the move my entire life, so it’s been easy for me to bounce around, and I love history and experiencing different places and cultures, so that part is really cool to me,” says Basso. “Honestly, the most frustrating thing is the gym: losing a gym routine, having to build a new one. Hotel gyms are super depressing.”
Basso needs the gym in part because of his heavy stunt work on the series about a clandestine officer who uncovers a government conspiracy. The actor, 31, prides himself in his participation in The Night Agents fight scenes, and this season the production upped the ante with a car chase through the Turkish capital, an extreme underwater brawl and explosions aplenty. Here, he breaks down how it all went down.
Can you talk about how shooting in Istanbul, on location, influenced this season?
We shot at an actual soccer game [for the first episode]. We got their first two goals on camera. There’s a scene where Genesis walks by me and I’m supposed to blend in with the crowd, and right when she stood up to do so they scored and everyone was up out of their seats cheering. I was celebrating in the crowd, too. It was so sick. They’re known for being a really passionate fan base, so feeling that energy in the stadium was great.
Is that the sort of moment where you can really feel the Netflix budget at work?
Well, we honestly were sneaking shots. It’s because of how passionate they are — we were worried that if we had a big footprint, and they lost the game, they would blame it on us. So we did all handheld cameras, not really any lights, very low profile.
What felt the most different about season 3 versus the first two years?
The first season was very chaotic. No one really knew what the show was. We didn’t have proof of concept, really. Season two was our first time in New York and we had the pressure, obviously, from season one. This time we finally figured the show out. Even in season two, when Peter is finally allowed to be a night agent, he was still looking for permission to do what he was hired to do. Now, he’s hit his stride as a character.
How involved are you in the preproduction phase of the show?
I’m in the writer’s room process early on. They’ll pitch me the overarching idea for the season, and I’ll give them some ideas.
From left: Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland and Suraj Sharma as Jay Batra in The Night Agent.
Are you pitching story arcs, or things that are more set piece or stunt work-focused?
Anything that I think is cool. I pitched the reverse 180 during the car chase scene in Turkey. I went out under the guise of getting some wheel time in a parking lot, and I had Josiah my stunt double hold the camera on the back right pillar. I was like, this shot would be sick, me looking past the lens and then throwing this reverse 180. It went up the ladder and they said no a few times, but I continued to chip away at ’em.
When they say no to that, is it because of the liability issue of you doing that stunt?
Yeah. And I say this every time, but I think it should like what you talk about with the NFL — you’re getting paid millions of dollars to take these hits. It’s part of the risk. Of course, I’m not going to do something stupid, and I’m going to train and there should be some level of insurance and liability and everything. Even if something doesn’t work, it’s like OK, he died in pursuit of greatness.
What does your family think of this line of thinking?
I don’t ask. I’m sure they wouldn’t love getting a call that I’ve been permanently injured but to me, it’s how did it happen? If I’m speeding down the 101 or the 405 being an idiot, they would hate that. But if it was like, he tried to make film history by doing this — that would be sick.
Gabriel Basso as Peter Sutherland in The Night Agent.
Whose idea was the underwater stunt at the end of the season?
There was a lot of back and forth on that. We did a lot of underwater training and breathing work. Austin Brewer is the stunt guy’s name, we were in the tank for nine or 10 hours just sort of scrapping it out. It was kind of stressful. He had a jacket on, and we were in there for so long that it changed color.
Did they tell you about that stunt ahead of time, or did you read it when the script came in?
I think it was originally written that we would fight in the car while it was on land, and then I drove it into the water and swam out of it. We eventually moved the fight underwater after our fight choreographer came up with some really cool stuff and someone pitched the idea of fighting while the truck filled up with water.
How did you create the explosion that comes after you’re on the dock?
We had a bunch of water canons that went off after I crawled out.
Have you ever been scared in the moment?
No. I think if I was scared I wouldn’t do it. Having your adrenaline pumping isn’t the same as fear. The minute you doubt yourself — they call it target fixation in skydiving, where you’re looking at a tree or a telephone pole thinking “don’t hit that,” and you start drifting there because you’re looking at it. So if you start thinking about the bad scenarios then you’re setting yourself up.
Linda Seger, who served as a script consultant on films from Peter Jackson, Roland Emmerich and hundreds of others and authored 11 books about screenwriting, has died. She was 80.
Seger died Feb. 16 of breast cancer at her home in Cascade, Colorado, her husband of 42 years, Peter Le Var, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Seger began her script consulting business in 1981 based on a script analysis method she developed as part of her doctoral dissertation, “What Makes a Script Work?” Her first book on screenwriting, Making a Good Script Great: A Guide for Writing and Rewriting, was published in 1987.
Ron Howard was given the book by his father, actor Rance Howard, and he told Seger that he used it on every one of his films beginning with Apollo 13 (1995). Tony Bill (Oscar-winning producer on The Sting), William Kelley (Oscar-winning writer on Witness) and Barbara Corday (co-creator of Cagney & Lacey) are among those who have praised the book over the years.
Seger was a consultant on Jackson’s Dead Alive and Emmerich’s Universal Soldier, both released in 1992, and Ray Bradbury was a client, too.
She also was a script consultant on Pasttime (1990) and Picture Bride (1995), winners of Audience Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and on such other films as Romero (1989), The Long Walk Home (1990), The Neverending Story II (1990), Luther (2003), Mr. Jones (1993) and Dating the Enemy (1996).
The younger of two daughters, Linda Sue Seger was born on Aug. 27, 1945, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Her father, Linus, was a pharmacist and her mother, Agnes, a homemaker and piano teacher.
She earned her undergraduate degree from Colorado College in 1967, followed by master’s degrees from the Pacific School of Religion and Northwestern and a doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union.
The prolific Seger consulted with writers, producers, directors and production companies on an estimated 2,500 scripts, 100 produced films and 35 produced TV projects, and she taught screenwriting on six continents and 33 countries, including Russia, Bulgaria and New Zealand.
She also led seminars for executives at ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, Embassy Television, RAI (Italy) and ZDF (Germany) and for members of the AFI, the DGA and the WGA before her retirement in 2020.
Her other books on screenwriting included 1990’s Creating Unforgettable Characters; 1992’s The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction Into Film; 1994’s From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking; 1999’s Making a Good Writer Great; 2003’s Advanced Screenwriting: Raising Your Script to the Academy Award Level; 2008’s And the Best Screenplay Goes to … ; 2011’s Writing Subtext: What Lies Beneath; 2019’s The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking: From Script to Screen; and 2020’s You Talkin’ to Me?: How to Write Great Dialogue.
Seger also wrote the 1996 book When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film, featuring interviews with Sherry Lansing, Dawn Steel and Nora Ephron; eight books on spirituality, including 2016’s Jesus Rode a Donkey: Why Millions of Christians Are Democrats; and a 2025 memoir, Unpacking.
Her husband said her favorite film was Stanley Donen’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).
Survivors include her half-brother, Fred. Donations in her memory can be made to a cancer charity.
Nicki Minaj raised eyebrows and ire among a portion of her fan base after her latest President Trump-related social media post — a signed Bible from the rapper’s newfound political hero — went wide online, the latest in a trend that may indicate the popular rapper’s voice may be seeing some artificial amplification online.
The multi-platinum-selling rapper-singer-songwriter, who has been vocal but not exactly outspoken on political topics over her nearly 20-year career, is known equally for her freestyling prowess as her penchant for eviscerating her enemies, in her songs, online, wherever. Recently, Minaj has become a political lightning rod amid an unabashed embrace of MAGA and Trump’s politics, which began to appear on her X page late last year. This rightward slide began in earnest after Minaj delivered a speech in November at the United Nations, advocating for an end to religious violence — freedom from persecution being one political matter on which she’d previously sounded off publicly.
This speech caught Trump’s attention, as she favorably name-checked his policies in her speech; given Trump’s history of jumping at opportunities to associate himself with the world of hip-hop, the friendship, or at least a public mutual appreciation, between the two Queens-raised celebrities was born. “I love Nicki Minaj,” Trump told guests at the White House Black History Month reception, calling her beautiful and complimenting her skin and nails. Over the weekend, the gifted Bible Minaj received from Trump brought fresh controversy — partly because Trump was now selling a Bible with his name on it for $1,000, but for Minaj fans, her remark that this was “one of the most meaningful gifts I’ve ever received in my entire life” indicated the red-pilled rapper had gone into MAGAland and was now past the point of no return.
Minaj’s Saturday post had significant reach on the X platform, with 14,000-plus comments and more than 117,000 users liking it as of Monday afternoon. Its reach is relevant this week, and likely under a higher level of scrutiny, after a report analyzing the impact of the rapper’s political tweets is the subject of a just-released study from Cyabra, an Israeli disinformation security company that detects fake social media accounts. Minaj’s rightward political turn has been highly publicized, but its outsized amplification on the X platform seems to have caught the eyes of the Cyabra team.
The study that the firm published this week, titled “Coordinated Inauthentic Amplification of Political Discourse on Nicki Minaj’s X Account,” looked at the rapper’s X account and who amplifies her political posts of late — the persecution of Christians in Nigeria; a new opposition to gender transition; criticism of Democratic politicians, particularly California Gov. Gavin Newsom; and her support for conservative political figures all entered her sphere of commentary.
Focusing on her politically related posts and assessing the authenticity of the accounts interacting with them, Cyabra’s study identifies a “materially elevated level of inauthentic activity” in her X account’s comments. Cyabras’s study shows that 33 percent of accounts that engaged with Minaj’s political posts were deemed fake, which is substantially higher than the baseline levels typically seen on social posts.
In its analysis of the campaign to amplify Minaj’s posts and her newfound far-right point of view, the firm indicated that the Minaj X campaign’s primary objective had less to do with her embrace of MAGA and more with boosting the rapper’s reputation.
“[The campaign was] focusing on reinforcing visible support for Nicki Minaj — particularly in posts that attracted criticism — in order to manufacture the appearance of broad public endorsement and a supportive fan base,” the report states.
Comments generated by fake profiles in support of Minaj were “predominantly brief, repetitive and low in semantic complexity.” Praising keywords and Minaj-positive hashtags were being used, rather than “original or substantive engagement,” the report found.
These sham X profiles operated in a coordinated manner, according to Cyabra, with synchronized posting, repeated keywords and messaging that was telling in how consistent it was across multiple X comment sections. The campaign generated significant impact by embedding fake accounts into real user conversations, resulting in 59,001 engagements and substantially increasing the visibility and reach of the amplified content.
As far as Cyabra is concerned, the Minaj boost campaign was a real success story.
“Overall, the findings show that the campaign was effective, using coordinated inauthentic engagement to materially influence perceived support and narrative visibility,” the firm concludes in its report.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Minaj and Cyabra for comment but did not immediately hear back on Monday.
If the briefings in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping case sometimes feel like reality TV, that’s because — in a way — they sort of are.
The man fielding questions at all those press conferences, Sheriff Chris Nanos, doesn’t just run the local police department that’s been investigating the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother — he’s the off-camera production partner for Desert Law, the A&E docuseries that follows Nanos’ deputies as they patrol more than 9,000 square miles of arid Arizona terrain. “Immersed in the pressure and danger of policing the desert night,” the show’s promo copy describes it, “the series captures a world where the spirit of the Old West still lingers and the fight for order never ends.”
Nanos himself doesn’t appear in the show — his choice, according to sources close to the series. But that could change next year — although those same sources say the possibility of the kidnapping becoming part of the plotline for season two has not yet been discussed. Still, over these past few weeks, since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, Nanos hasn’t exactly been shy when it comes to news cameras.
After initially holding joint press conferences with the FBI, he has recently shifted to a series of more personal, one-on-one interviews — a strategy that has occasionally led to awkward exchanges, particularly while conversing with conservative outlets.
“Let’s just say he did not put out the welcome mat,” Newsmax’s John Huddy tweeted after his Feb. 18 sit-down with Nanos, during which the sheriff, a Democrat, brushed off what he sees as politically motivated criticism. “This isn’t an election campaign — that’s three years down the road.” Nanos’ Feb. 17 appearance with NewsNation’s Brian Entin wasn’t any friendlier. On his YouTube recap, Entin described the pre-interview moment when Nanos set the tone: “You have questions for me,” Nanos told him, “and I have questions for you.”
Of course, the stakes remain deadly serious: An 84-year-old woman is still missing. But when a sheriff whose department headlines a reality show finds himself sparring with reporters on MAGA platforms, it definitely feels like an unscripted star may have just been born.
Michael is set to hit theaters and Imax on April 24 after its release was delayed several times, most recently having been dated for the fall of 2025. Marking his feature debut is Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the lead role as the pop music icon. Lionsgate is distributing the movie domestically, while Universal handles the global launch.
“It’s a very spiritual journey, making a movie about someone like Michael,” Fuqua says in a video that Lionsgate released Monday. “Michael was a big influence on my career as a director, seeing how he refused to get put in a box as just a Black artist only.”
Fuqua’s movie debuted its latest trailer earlier this month. Michael co-stars Colman Domingo as the singer’s father, Joe Jackson, and Nia Long as his mother, Katherine. Rounding out the cast are Miles Teller, Laura Harrier, Kat Graham, Larenz Tate and Derek Luke. Graham King, John Branca and John McClain produce the film that has a script from John Logan.
“Michael’s whole life was giving to people this joy of his voice,” Fuqua continues in the video. “When I watched him on TV, he was always larger than life. For me as a filmmaker, it wasn’t a leap to see it in a cinematic way.”
The Training Day director adds, “I don’t think you can understand Michael Jackson as a human being unless you went back and go on a bit of a journey. He was struggling between his love for his family and his love for his music.”
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in the biopic Michael.
Kevin Mazur
The Hollywood Reporterpreviously reported that Michael, initially intended to span the star’s life and have a lengthy run time, had pivoted and would instead end with Jackson leaving his family’s group The Jacksons after the release of his first solo album, 1979’s Off the Wall. According to sources, a second film remains in development that would focus on the rest of Jackson’s career and path prior to his 2009 death.
Puck reported last year that Michael’s previously planned third act had to be retooled, due to it including a dramatization of an individual who accused Jackson of child sexual abuse. The accuser had a past settlement with the performer’s estate stipulating that he would never be dramatized.
“Why I wanted to make it is Michael,” Fuqua said during a San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2024. “Michael was a big part of my life growing up, a big influence on my career, an incredible artist — but he was a human being, and we’re exploring that.”
Following the rave reviews and reactions to 2022’s Emily the Criminal, filmmaker John Patton Ford felt like he needed to strike while the iron was hot.
The South Carolina native made the rounds to discuss the possibilities of what he could do for his sophomore effort. Such a water-bottle-collecting moment was truly a long time coming for the writer-director. He’d been toiling away since the late 2000s in order to get one of his scripts produced. Several projects had fallen apart on or near the one-yard line, but together with his lead actor Aubrey Plaza and what would become her career-best performance, he finally crossed the plane with Emily in 2022.
The crime thriller may not have blown the roof off the summer box office, but its strong word of mouth and four Independent Spirit Awards nominations, including Ford’s win for “best first screenplay,” flooded his inbox with opportunities.
“It was an overwhelming moment that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, to be honest. I felt a lot of insecurity at that time. I felt like I had to get another movie going pronto or else the attention would go away,” Ford tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Within a few months, Ford dusted off an old script called Rothchild that The Black List had recognized all the way back in 2014. Loosely inspired by 1949’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, the tragicomedy chronicles a bastard son named Becket who starts killing off all the estranged family members who stand in the way of the inheritance that he and his late mother were wrongly denied. Like Emily, it’s a film about the desperate measures people take for money.
“After school, I struggled for a long, long time. Now I’m a white guy with an education; I can only fail so hard. But I wasn’t getting to do what I wanted to do for a long, long time,” Ford says. “It seeped into my pores and took over my personality. I thought it was just never going to end. So I was willing to do whatever it took to get my career going, and hey, big surprise, I make movies about similar people.”
In 2019, the film nearly got made when it hit the Cannes Market as a Shia LaBeouf-Mel Gibson package for another director. At the time, LaBeouf was riding high on the Sundance sale of his semi-autobiographical drama, Honey Boy, and Gibson was still enjoying some post-Hacksaw Ridge goodwill. However, between Gibson’s checkered history and the title’s similarity to a real-life banking dynasty, controversy seemingly derailed the picture.
In 2023, the project reemerged with a new title and a new family surname (among other things). Glen Powell and Ed Harris eventually became the new grandson-grandfather pairing of Becket and Whitelaw Redfellow. Ford has repeatedly likened Powell to a cross between Captain America and a golden retriever, but he reveals that there was early concern among executives when Powell showed up to set looking like Steve Rogers, pre-Super Soldier Serum. The actor, as he noted in a THRcover story, lost at least 15 pounds by ingesting a steady stream of bone broth. He even changed his hair color after another coiffure concept was ruled out.
“When he came on set, he didn’t quite look like Glen Powell — or not how people expected — and some of the executives were actually really concerned at first,” Ford shares. “He also had a crazy wig [initially], and we were like, ‘That’s a step too far.’”
For a film that ultimately condemns billionaire families who take all they can and give next to nothing back, Ford repurposed a directive he once received during a sales job to define the Redfellow patriarch’s (Harris) unwavering philosophy.
“They said [the sales pitch] like it was a lesson that we needed to learn: ‘Your only enemy is your own conscience. If you can turn that off, you can actually succeed,’” Ford recalls. “It is, on one hand, a brilliant thing to say. On the other hand, it’s completely sociopathic. I didn’t want to have a movie that says, ‘Rich people are bad, period,’ and that’s it. I wanted something a little more complex.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Ford also discusses some of the film’s lingering questions, as well as whether he and Plaza have another team-up in store.
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Aubrey Plaza as the title character in John Patton’s Ford’s Emily the Criminal.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute/Low Spark Films
Emily the Criminal received rave reviews, and it became a word-of-mouth movie among industry people and the audience. Did you go on a water bottle tour as you figured out what to do next? Or did you go straight for this old Black List script of yours?
I did the tour. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do next. It was an overwhelming moment that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, to be honest. I felt a lot of insecurity at that time. I felt like I had to get another movie going pronto or else the attention would go away. It’s funny how that works, and it took me a minute. It was maybe two or three months before this project came to light [again], but when it did, I was on that train for as long as it took.
Both Emily and How to Make a Killing explore the extreme lengths that people will go to for money. Is there a deep-rooted reason why you’re drawn to this theme?
This is a lot like the Zoom therapy session I had two days ago. The quick answer is: after school, I struggled for a long, long time. Now I’m a white guy with an education; I can only fail so hard. So I don’t mean to paint a picture like I had it rough, but I wasn’t getting to do what I wanted to do for a long, long time. I was living off of an incredibly low amount of money a year in L.A., and I don’t even know how I did that for so long. It seeped into my pores and took over my personality. I thought it was just never going to end. I was cooking in that marinade for so long that I’ll probably be burning off the fumes of those feelings for a while. So I was willing to do whatever it took to get my career going, and hey, big surprise, I make movies about similar people.
John Patton Ford on the set of How to Make a Killing.
A24
When a debut feature is received well, the filmmaker is sometimes miscategorized as an overnight success, and that probably happened with you and Emily.
Yeah, it was probably about 12 years of trying to get something made. I’d had four projects come together and fall apart. One of them was pretty late into the game, and it was brutal.
Marty Supreme had the slogan of “dream big.” I just watched a movie called GOAT that also had the “dream big” mantra. Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman’s recent movie, Song Sung Blue, even has the tagline of “dream huge.”
Does it really? (Laughs.)
It does. But Ruth (Jessica Henwick) makes the opposite point that it’s okay to dream small even though we’re not taught to think that way. Do you think it’s a mistake that so many of us are conditioned to believe that “the right kind of life” involves fame and/or fortune?
I don’t know if it’s a mistake, but I do know that we have a societal conundrum in the sense that we’re born into this system where you have to grow, expand and earn more. We have a system that is reliant upon growth, or it quite literally won’t work. We measure our success in growth. How much more money are we making? How many jobs have we added? How is the GDP going up? That boils down to the individual, and yet the definition of contentment is literally the sensation of not wanting anything more than you currently have. So how do you reconcile these two things? And maybe that’s just the experience of being a human regardless of what system you’re inside of. I don’t know. But I find it fascinating and compelling.
I also find it interesting how hard I work and how many things I’m doing. Does it net out to contentment or security as much as I think it does? Probably not. I’m fascinated by Gen Z and their emerging attitude that they’re just not going to work as hard as previous generations. They’re kind of my favorite generation ever. I’m cheering them on, man. I’m also terrified of them, but I hope it works out.
The whole movie, Becket is trying to figure out what his mother meant when she made him promise to pursue “the right kind of life.” He assumes it’s material wealth, but do you think his mother would ultimately agree with Ruth?
I would probably never speak to that in an interview. I feel like I don’t want to show all the marbles. Is that an expression? I think I just made that up.
Show all your cards?
Cards! Thank you. Who’s got marbles anymore? But I hesitate to get too in the weeds about that. We definitely wanted his mom to provide this canonic text in the beginning, and then for the rest of the story, he’s trying to interpret what she exactly meant by that. For me, it just reflects an overall cultural norm, especially in the U.S. We’re taught from early on about ambition — reach for the stars and dream big, as you said. But what does that mean? What do we do with that? Where does it lead and why? It’s a little mysterious. So these are the questions I was interested in. What did his mom literally mean? I don’t really know. I don’t know any more than the central character does.
Jessica Henwick as Ruth in How to Make a Killing.
A24
I don’t think this movie works without Jessica Henwick pulling off the heart and moral compass as well as she does. Knowing you had so many despicable characters, did you always view Ruth as the movie’s linchpin?
Yeah, I think so. I saw Ruth as someone who provided an alternative. She’s someone who has a different value system and a different way of living that would provide the central character with a dilemma. Do I want to go in her direction, or do I want to go in another direction? Jess is an incredible actor. She can do anything. But she also has a flavor of that kind of thing in real life. She strikes me as someone who’s really well-adjusted, and she has her passions outside of acting. She’s so great that people keep asking her to be in stuff over and over again, but she’s one of the only actors I know who’s constantly trying not to work. Actors are always doing whatever they can to get booked — except for Jess Henwick. She’s like, “I just want to go backpacking. I just want to go on a solo.” She’s big into outdoor stuff. She’s a super experienced backpacker, and she’s always trying to take these trips. Then she gets cast in something, and she’s like, “Ah! I had all my gear.” She’s the best.
She and I talked about her future recently, and I definitely walked away worried.
We can’t let her go. She’s too good.
Glen Powell as Becket Redfellow in How to Make a Killing.
A24 Films
Glen Powell went on the world-famous bone broth diet to lose weight for this movie. What was his reasoning? That Becket was hungry literally and figuratively?
That was something he brought to the table. He wanted to look a certain way, and he didn’t want the character to be reminiscent of previous characters he played. I think it’s worth noting that, on arrival, stock Glen, the basic version of Glen, looks like a superhero. The dude is jacked, and his base weight is “jacked dude.” So he didn’t think that made sense for the character. For this person to be an underdog and for him to not be getting what he wants, he felt that it doesn’t make sense for him to look like Captain America. So he went on a crazy diet and lost a lot of weight. He even changed his hair color. When he came on set, he didn’t quite look like Glen Powell — or not how people expected — and some of the executives were actually really concerned at first. He also had a crazy wig [initially], and we were like, “That’s a step too far.”
Becket’s childhood friend, Julia (Margaret Qualley), keeps close tabs on him throughout the movie, and she’s onto him and his killings before anyone else. Thus, was their initial reunion at the Brooks Brothers-type store really an accident? Could she have been that many moves ahead? Did she already sense that her fiancé Lyle was heading in the wrong direction and start lining up a plan B?
To me, it wasn’t calculated. It’s just happenstance, and then it kicks things off. But the thing about Margaret is that she’s so overwhelming on camera. She has such confidence that she takes over everything when she shows up, and it’s impossible to look at anything else. And for that reason, audiences are free to project any number of things onto her character. That character is so nuts that you can easily imagine that she had it all figured out and planned. She just has so much confidence that you can build your own narrative off of it. But from my mind, she was just showing up.
Margaret Qualley as Julia in How to Make a Killing.
A24 Films
To put it mildly, Redfellow-type people have been in the news a lot lately, and so I couldn’t help but watch the film through that lens. Thus, Ed Harris’ monologue about ignoring one’s conscience was what I imagine a lot of these wealthy elites learn to do. Were you actually trying to rationalize how many of these people live with themselves?
Yeah, sure. In that moment with Ed Harris, I didn’t want a movie that says, “Rich people are bad, period,” and that’s it. I wanted something a little more complex. Who is this guy actually? What is his mantra? What is his way of living, and can you criticize it exactly if it works for him? What he says is something that someone said to me once at a sales pitch for this company I was working for, and they said it in an unironic way. They said it like it was a lesson that we needed to learn: “Your only enemy is your own conscience, telling you some kind of story about what’s right and what’s wrong. If you can turn that off, you can actually succeed.”
It is, on one hand, a brilliant thing to say. On the other hand, it’s completely sociopathic. Which one is it? History is littered with no shortage of geniuses and incredibly successful people who probably followed that mantra completely, from Napoleon to Henry Ford to you name it. But what were the casualties of that mindset? Yes, they led to great breakthroughs and successes and things that may have helped humanity as a whole, but what did it cost? So I wanted to infuse it with that.
In a perfect world, what would you do next?
I would love to make something more similar to my first movie. I would love to get back to a character-driven thriller, something much more grounded and based in reality. This movie was a huge adventure out into the left field. It’s something I never thought I’d do, and it just felt so different. No regrets, I learned a lot, but I also learned that it is not the comfiest zone for me. Things that are elevated and aren’t quite reality, they’re hard. So now that I have a better idea of what my wheelhouse is, I’d like to get back to that wheelhouse. If Sidney Lumet was born in the ‘80s, what movie would he make right now? That’s what I’m looking for right now.
Do you think you and Aubrey Plaza will have another story to tell someday?
Yeah, I love Aubrey. Whatever she wants. I would love to. We’re both a little bit older now. We’d have to figure out what that thing is. We were both raised by lawyers. Both of our parents are attorneys and litigators, and there’s something there. I would love to see her playing an attorney who’s locked into really heated debates with someone. If you’ve been around Aubrey, you know how smart she is and how good she is at arguing. So I’d love to see that. I don’t have a story, but I’d love to see whatever that is.
*** How to Make a Killing is now playing in movie theaters.
Hulu‘s revival of The X-Files is moving forward and the project has cast its first co-lead.
Danielle Deadwyler has landed one of the two coveted starring roles in the series.
In addition, Sinners filmmaker Ryan Coogler — who has long been attached to the show — is now confirmed to both write and direct the pilot, which has been officially greenlit.
The new show’s official description: “Two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena.”
This logline is slightly different from the premise of Fox’s original, which debuted in 1993 and ran for nine seasons and spawned two movies. The original series kicked off with Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) being assigned to the paranormal division to help debunk true believer Agent Fox Mulder’s (David Duchovny) work.
Jennifer Yale (See, The Copenhagen Test) will serve as showrunner. The X-Files‘ original creator and showrunner, Chris Carter, will be a non-writing executive producer on the series. Sev Ohanian and Zinzi Coogler, who are Coogler’s partners at their Proximity Media banner, are also non-writing EPs on the show.
Coogler is a great get for Hulu, with the Black Panther director red hot after delivering last year’s most celebrated surprise hit with Sinners, which is nominated for 16 Oscars.
Deadwyler has appeared in The Woman in the Yard and Netflix’s adaptation of The Piano Lesson (and earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for best supporting actress for the latter). She is also set to appear in HBO’s upcoming third season of Euphoria and star in HBO’s upcoming comedy series Rooster.
The X-Files will be produced by Onyx Collective and 20th Television and is returning amid a widespread surge of interest in aliens and UFOs. The topic has received congressional attention with several hearings devoted to UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), recent headlines with presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump weighing in on the topic, and Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film, Disclosure Day, having a premise that sounds straight out of The X-Files.
Yale is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Hansen Jacobson. Carter is repped by CAA and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman, Inc.
With nine total NBA Champion rings — five as a player and four (thus far) as head coach of the Golden State Warriors — Steve Kerr is a bonafide NBA legend. But what would be truly legendary is if Kerr’s bright mind could help change gun culture in America.
Kerr’s father Malcolm Kerr was assassinated by a pair of gunmen in 1984 at the American University of Beirut, where he served as president. Malcolm Kerr allowed Lebanese residents to use the college’s vacant buildings to avoid an Israeli assault on West Beirut. What he did not allow was for Israeli officers to inspect those he sheltered. Kerr’s assassination was claimed by the Islamic Jihad Organization, a militant organization close to Hezbollah.
Steve Kerr is a natural shooter — he still holds the NBA record for career 3-point shooting percentage. Given his family tragedy, Kerr has also naturally transitioned into an advocate for common sense gun safety. His two pursuits crossed paths just a few months ago when John Beam, the athletic director at Laney Community College and the head football coach on season five of Netflix docuseries Last Chance U, was shot and killed on campus some 12 miles from where the Warriors play.
At a press conference for just another NBA game in November, Kerr used his platform to honor Beam and pushed for a change in our unfortunate culture of American gun violence. Kerr’s message brought him to Joshua Seftel’s All the Empty Rooms documentary, a short film chronicling the bedrooms of children murdered by gun violence that is now on Netflix and in Oscar contention, as an executive producer. That’s where The Hollywood Reporter began its Q&A, recorded on the Friday of NBA All-Star Weekend, with Kerr.
What did you actually do here as an executive producer?
My joke, which is the dead truth, is that executive producer is a fancy way of saying, “I had nothing to do with it.” But I support it. I was asked maybe a year ago if I would be interested in being an executive producer, and immediately said, “Yes,” because I think— number one, I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s so powerful, and I think it speaks to everybody, and it cuts through all the political bullshit. And I think it’s so important. I mean, I have two granddaughters who are going to be heading off to school in the next couple of years. You know, the thought of them having to go through these active shooter drills, it’s just heartbreaking. So I just think there’s got to be ways to get through to people that this is an issue that we can tackle, and we don’t have to be pitted against each other on political lines.
What is your solution to gun violence in America?
I do work with Brady — you’ve probably heard of them. And one of the things I like about Brady is that they’re named after a Republican, and they are very much nonpartisan in their quest to protect people and save lives. But it almost sounds funny saying that, because it so clearly is a partisan issue. What Brady tries to do is cut through the political lines, and I do think that there are ways to do that. And one of the the campaigns that they have is called End Family Fire. It’s basically a nationwide campaign for gun owners to safely store their guns. So you’re really reaching out to gun owners, not far left people in San Francisco. You’re talking to directly to people who have guns. Eight kids a day are shot by un-stored guns. Seventy-five percent of school shootings happen with unsecured guns.
And so this is a really simple campaign that Brady has embarked on. This is not about the Second Amendment — it’s about gun responsibility. And in the old days, the NRA was all about gun safety. They taught gun safety. They encouraged good habits, and they were a completely different organization than they are now — now they’re just basically a wing of the gun lobby trying to increase sales. But when they first started, they were trying to teach gun owners how to be safe. And so even that alone is saving lives already.
Like most social-impact documentaries, this one was a very hard watch at times. Is there one story or scene that is particularly tough for you to watch?
Gosh, I mean, I cried several times. You know, I’ve seen it several times, and I’ve cried every time. I think the SpongeBob characters in the room (was the hardest for me). That was really, really tough … Seeing the rooms, I think, is so real because — you know, I have three kids, and they’re all grown now, but it’s like those rooms could have been my kids rooms or your kids rooms. I think that’s what hits home, is that anybody with children, it really reminds you that this is about human loss. It’s not about a statistic or political issue. And that’s the power of the movie.
You know they never mention guns one time in the film. They don’t even talk about solutions. It just focuses on the loss. And I think the most beautiful part of the film is just how deeply moved and empathetic (journalist) Steve Hartman and (photographer) Lou (Bopp) both are. Like, the juxtaposition of them going home to their own kids, and how respectful they are, you know, taking their shoes off before they go into the room. I just thought it was so beautifully done. And I don’t know that it could have happened without those two guys and their humanity and how prominent that was.
It was interesting to me that, to a family, each of the kids rooms were untouched — for some that included not picking up after and cleaning dirty laundry. No judgment on my end because far be it for anyone not in that terrible situation to say what they would or wouldn’t do, but it struck me.
Yeah, yeah. I totally agree. I thought that was really interesting, too. And it seemed to be the common thread that all the parents just wanted to preserve everything so that they could go in there and just feel the presence of their children. You’re young enough where you haven’t experienced it yet, but for every family who’s an empty nester, you go into your kid’s room after they leave for college and you sit in there sometimes and you reminisce and you think about their childhood — and they’re alive. So imagine the power of that room if the children are no longer with you. So, yeah, it was really, really something — so difficult to watch and yet so necessary to watch.
What would an Oscar mean for this film and the subject matter?
Well, I don’t really know, because it’s not my world. It’s something that I’ve thought about, and I don’t really know what to make of it. I would hope that it would just increase viewership. I think the more people who watch it, the more impact it will have. And that’s the main thing for me, is — what I want is, I want people to act, I want people to be proactive with this issue. I think Steve Hartman talks about it in the beginning of the movie, he says that human nature is to go numb and to look away — but the point of the movie is for people not to look away. It’s to address it and understand it. What my hope is, if they can address it and understand it a little bit, then they’ll be more willing to act on it.
Like a lot of issues that society has — it’s kind of a movement that has to happen. It’s not going to be, you know, all of a sudden people in Congress are going to come to their senses and say, “Oh, OK, maybe [we’ll change gun laws].” It’s going to be a movement. It’s going to be people sort of demanding it. It’s the turning of the cruise ship, is the analogy. So hopefully this will, you know, help turn the cruise ship.
7 May 1996: John Starks (left) of the New York Knicks puts a hand in the face of guard Steve Kerr of the Chicago Bulls during the Bulls 91-80 round 1 Eastern Conference Playoff win at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Doug Pens/Getty Images
If you’ll indulge me, I’d love to talk some hoop here too.
Of course.
Your Warriors contract expires in a few months — what are you thinking for next season?
I love what I do. I love coaching and so this is something I want to keep doing. But you know, it has to line up organizationally, and, and I’m completely at ease with that fact. These jobs all have expiration dates on them, and you don’t know exactly when that is. But, it’s important for me that this ends in a really healthy way. So if it’s not right for next year and I move on, I’ll be very happy and grateful for the opportunity. And if it works out, great, then I’ll keep going — but we all have to be on the same page.
You were a pretty good 3-point shooter in your day and still hold the record for highest career three-point percentage. You have a guy on your team who can shoot a bit as well — is there anything you’ve personally taught Steph Curry about shooting?
I’m not touching it — I haven’t touched it. I’ve never, ever given him one bit of shooting advice.
When I was growing up, there was a commercial about the Maytag repairman. The Maytag repairman just had nothing to do all day because Maytags run perfectly. I am the Maytag repairman (with Steph).
Last week (at the time of this interview), Fox Sports talking head Nick Wright said the way to fix the NBA All-Star Game is white players vs. Black players. Thoughts?
First, I thought it was hilarious, and I’m glad we’re getting back to being allowed to tell politically incorrect jokes. But maybe he was actually serious. I don’t really know.
