Sony’s Crunchyroll has snapped up global distribution rights to anime hitmaker Makoto Shinkai‘s much-anticipated next feature.
The anime streamer will co-distribute the untitled project with Sony Pictures Entertainment across the world excluding Asia — with the exception of India, which is grouped with the Western territories. Crunchyroll said Tuesday that the film’s title, plot details and expected timing are all being kept under wraps for now.
While exceedingly little about the new feature is known, Shinkai is unmistakably one of anime’s biggest blockbuster names. His breakthrough feature Your Name grossed $358 million worldwide in 2016, a landmark in anime’s international expansion. Weathering With You followed in 2019 with $193 million, and 2022’s Suzume took roughly $323 million. All three features rank high among the top-grossing anime films of all time.
The new film will follow the same distribution path as Suzume, which was handled jointly by Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures. The film bowed in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival and went on to earn a Golden Globe nomination for best animated feature after earning more than $10 million in U.S. theaters.
Shinkai, 53, has released a feature roughly every three years — Your Name in 2016, Weathering With You in 2019, Suzume in 2022 — and anticipation has been building among anime fandom over the past four years about what his next work might be. The director broke his silence in a New Year’s social media message in January, writing that he would finally be able to share concrete details about his next film sometime this year.
For Crunchyroll, the deal extends a theatrical run that has made the Sony-owned company the dominant Western distributor of Japanese animation — it claims 12 of the 20 top-grossing anime releases in U.S. history, including Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, last year’s global phenomenon.
Debora Cahn received her first Emmy nomination 20 years ago as a producer on The West Wing. Now, the TV vet is up for best drama for her own show, the political thriller The Diplomat, for the second straight year — while also receiving her first-ever writing nod.
Cahn discusses with THR her partnership with star Rufus Sewell and writing the “terrifying” finale.
The show has grown in Emmy nominations over each of its three seasons. What do you make of that from your own creative perspective of evolving the show?
There’s always the hope that a show can continue to thrive past all of your first-grade ideas, which you lay out in the first season. All of the low-hanging fruit storywise goes into those first few episodes. Then it turns into this new thing that is partly a show that I had in my mind and partly the product of a bunch of people working on this thing together — the relationship that Keri [Russell] and Rufus built out of Kate and Hal and turned into this marriage that has really drawn people in and served as the spine of the series. The hope is always that you haven’t used up all your good tricks and that you have a deeper well than you knew yourself going in. That’s a little bit of a leap of faith. It’s really great when it feels like your audience is responding to that reach.
Rufus got his first nomination for the show, and it feels appropriate since Hal takes more center stage this season opposite Kate. What is it like writing for him?
He has been, from the beginning, this stellar dance partner who is in so many ways responsible for everything that that relationship is. There are a lot of people who really connect with Kate as a character, and see themselves in that character, and there is a tremendous amount of love for Hal and connection with Hal. I sense from the audience that Hal is just giving them a unique ride. He’s fucking great.
You end the season with Kate realizing Hal’s subtle, brutal betrayal. How did you get there?
When you’ve achieved a finale by blowing a bunch of people up and then you’ve achieved a finale by having a president killed, having an interesting shift in one character’s attitude toward another character … is the most terrifying finale to write. (Laughs.) It was intimidating to try and figure out how you make a finale out of a really subtle shift in perspective that you’re not sure is real. It was a relief that people were willing to watch.
You’re nominated for writing the episode “Amagansett” with Peter Ackerman, which pits the relationship between Kate and Hal against that of the president and first gentleman, Grace (Allison Janney) and Todd (Bradley Whitford). How did that parallel develop?
It certainly was an experiment in turning the Grace character into a piece of another marriage where the marriage itself was going to be a character in the way that Kate and Hal’s was. We didn’t know that it was actually going to work, but was there a ton of suspense? No: It’s Allison and Brad. We were excited to see them build a different kind of way to work together after they had decades ago. We were all a little bit nervous that we were writing into a piece of the past, but they so elegantly and joyfully have created this whole new thing with two new characters that are just such a blast to watch. Every time that epic foursome is onstage together, the whole crew leans in. It’s just without question a career highlight for me, seeing the four of them work together. Boy, does game recognize game.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Lucy Davis, the actress who starred in the original British version of The Office, has revealed she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.
The actress shared a post on Instagram explaining that she initially felt a lump that “wasn’t a ‘lump’ as such; rather a kind of hard spot. Really tiny. I almost didn’t bother getting it checked,” urging others to attend regular checkups. Davis also said that her cancer is “incurable.”
“A year and a half ago I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer, which has metastasized to my bones,” she wrote. “Specifically to my spine, right hip, and my ribs. The cancer is incurable, and too late for chemo.”
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Davis shared the extent of her pain, noting that it “can really be something else.” She added, “Standing and walking for too long a time can be hard, and I need to use a wheelchair sometimes (so if you see me toddling around in one, feel free to give me a push!).”
Davis starred in the original Office throughout its three-season run as Dawn Tinsley, a receptionist at the Wernham Hogg paper merchant company. Her character formed a romance with Martin Freeman’s Tim Canterbury; Davis’ Dawn was the model for Jenna Fischer’s Pam Beesly.
“As of now, I’m trying to live out whatever might be left of my life in as fun a way as I possibly can,” Davis wrote. “I always like to find the teachable moments in anything negative that happens. And cancer has not disappointed in that regard; there’s a lot I have learned from it, and I’m grateful for that.”
Camp Rock 3 sees the brothers’ band Connect 3 returning to the camp to look for a new opening act for their tour. This means a whole new cast of campers — led by Malachi Barton and Liamani Segura — are introduced, along with a cameo appearance from fellow O.G. star Demi Lovato (who also serves as an EP).
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s L.A. premiere on Monday, Joe Jonas said that in shooting scenes with Lovato, they “both were looking at these new campers kind of pinching ourselves like wow, this is a pretty wild full circle moment. We’ve all lived so much life and to be where we are today and to create something like this, Camp Rock 3, as producers, wearing the producer hat, I think we were like, ‘This is kind of wild.’”
Walking the carpet alongside Nick Jonas and Kevin Jonas, Joe also weighed in on getting to know the next generation of Disney stars, and how different it is now than when the brothers were first getting famous.
“I don’t envy anybody that’s doing this now, there’s probably a lot more scrutiny,” Joe noted. “Things happen a lot faster, and with that you also have an opportunity to kind of explain yourself quicker; when we were starting, we didn’t have a lot of options — just kind of hope that the article isn’t about you. Now you can at least go on your TikTok and say, ‘Hey guys, I didn’t say that’ or whatever it is.”
Joe Jonas also emphasized that there are more resources now to speak to professionals and get support from the studio, and “we also wanted to make sure that we were running a safe space on set. That was one of our priorities when we signed up to do this, we were like, ‘We want these kids to feel comfortable,’ because ultimately we remember what it was like and it can be a lot of pressure. They’re about to be shot out of a cannon into stardom, so we wish them the best and we hope they’re surrounded by love and care.”
Lovato said she also offered the new stars plenty of advice, telling them that “this is going to be a whirlwind and make sure to take breaks if you need them; it’s so important to protect your mental health, and to soak it up and to have fun. That’s the most important part.”
The pop star explained that returning to Camp Rock almost two decades after the sequel was “really healing for me,” as “Camp Rock has meant so much to so many people and it’s meant so much to me; this was the beginning of my journey in this industry and [my character] Mitchie will always have a huge, special place in my heart.”
Camp Rock 3 premieres Thursday on Disney Channel and the next day on Disney+.
A remake of Possession is ready to take over theaters.
Paramount Pictures has set a wide theatrical release for filmmaker Parker Finn‘s reimagining of the 1981 supernatural thriller feature on June 11, 2027. Callum Turner, Margaret Qualley, Diego Calva, Madeline Brewer, Emory Cohen, Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Paul Dano round out the cast.
Finn (Smile) helms Possession from his own script that is based on writer-director Andrzej Żuławski’s original film. Producers for the new movie include Finn and Jonathan Fass for Bad Feeling, alongside Roy Lee and Andrew Childs for Vertigo. Robert Pattinson also produces.
Also set for theatrical release on that same weekend is Universal’s live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon 2.
Starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill, the 1981 Possession centered on a woman going through a divorce who begins exhibiting bizarre behavior. A meditation on marriage, the international co-production between France and Germany was not a major hit but developed a cult following.
Finn made his feature directorial debut with 2022’s Smile, a breakout horror hit for Paramount that grossed $217 million globally on a $17 million budget. He also helmed the 2024 sequel.
Turner currently stars opposite Monica Barbaro in Will Gluck’s romantic comedy One Night Only, which hit theaters over the weekend from Universal. Qualley stars alongside Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin in Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, which 20th Century is set to release theatrically later this month.
Bailey Taylor, one of the newest recurring cast members on Bravo’s Summer House, has signed with Gersh for representation in all areas.
Outside of Summer House, Taylor is a content creator behind the It Girl series, which includes an online video series, the Substack The It Girl Guide and the iHeartRadio podcast It Girl Podcast, where recent guests range from Dieux Skin founder Charlotte Palermino to Love Island alums.
Taylor joined the Bravo series in its latest season, which later exploded into scandal and earned its first Emmy nomination in the outstanding unstructured reality program category. The season, the tenth for the long-running show, earned series ratings highs, with a record-breaking 2.2 million viewers per episode.
“We had no idea where it was going,” executive producer Steven Weinstock recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “We had to sit and look at the story arcs of the individuals that were involved and we had to consider ways in which we could bring that story to the audience that really made sense and didn’t cheat them out of the real drama of the story.”
If Frank Miller seems everywhere this summer, it may be because he has been everywhere this summer. The comic book legend known for Dark Knight Returns and Sin City has been on a multi-hemisphere, multi-city book tour for his memoir/creative manifesto, Push the Wall: My Life, Writing, Drawing, and the Art of Storytelling, sitting down in front of audiences for talks with collaborators Zack Snyder and Robert Rodriguez and fellow authors Scott Snyder and Joe Hill.
The book, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, debuted in the top 15 on the New York Times best seller list and Miller has no plans on stopping his book tour just yet.
Miller was also at San Diego Comic-Con and then showed up to the premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day in Los Angeles. The movie features his ninja clan creation The Hand as one of Spidey’s antagonists.
“It was a hoot; they did a lot of clever stuff with it,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter of the movie. Regarding the Hand sequences in the movie, he adds, “they clearly had seen a lot of the Hong Kong movies that I’d seen over the years.”
Miller has also been catching up on his moviegoing, and had seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he calls “extravagant.” The creator behind Spartan story 300 knows his way around an ancient Greek myth or two (he can easily slip into expounding on Corinthian style helmets and their influence on Sparta) and says the movie “really did an awful lot right.”
Tuesday sees the wide digital release of Frank Miller: American Genius, the documentary made by his creative partner Silenn Thomas, which doesn’t just look at his career and work but, as he puts it, delves into “this wonderful subculture that we all share of comic book and how it celebrates itself all over the planet.”
But this is no farewell tour. The 69-year old Miller no plans on slowing down and is pushing ahead on a new Sin City book as well as a few others. “I feel like I’m just now freely exploring where I wanna take this medium. There’s no reason not to keep going,” he says.
Amid his movie watching and globe-trotting, Miller hopped on the phone with THR to talk about the influence of mentor Neal Adams and Jim Shooter, why he didn’t leave (but still left) Marvel in the 1980s, and why he’s returning to Dark Horse for his latest book, Invasive Species.
Your book is part memoir and part lessons in creativity. Why do it this way?
I got my career started by calling up Neal Adams’ office and getting a meeting with him. Neal Adams was the premier artist in comics at the time, and his art had a great effect on me as a child. And he was listed in the phone book. And I got to meet him that day, an hour after I called. And he looked over my drawings and told me they were terrible and sent me off. I redid them and I saw him again and again and again. And he was always a harsh critic, but every time he taught me more and more, sometimes doing drawings over them. And, and as the months went by, he got me my first job and he continued to be a sensei and an advisor to me on things professional and on how to deal with being an artist in the world and many other things. Years passed and I became successful. And one time, Neal and I were at a comic book convention and I just took him aside and I just said, “Neal, how do I thank you for what you’ve done for me? You’ve never asked me for anything.” And he said, “Oh, there’s only one thing you can do. Do the same thing for the next guy.” Well, this book really is my attempt to do the same thing for the next guy. And to commit to paper my experiences, my observations and, and the lessons learned in making comic books.
Speaking of mentors, Jim Shooter (the wonderkid who became Marvel’s polarizing editor-in-chief through the 1980s) was also one. Do you remember the first time you met him?
My first memorable encounter with Jim was at the Marvel offices. I basically came in and was sort of selling my services. I’d gotten some little job, doing some little three-pager of something like Doc Sampson and that had gotten his attention enough to want to keep me around. And, he gave me his lecture on storytelling. Everything was always storytelling with Jim because he felt comics had really lost track of their basic mission, which was to enchant and compel young readers with gripping stories.
He came in on a fairly loose pack of people who were all over the map creatively. And he worked to pull it all together into a more cohesive unit.
There were a lot of writer-editors and little fiefdoms at the time.
Right. He focused more than ever on the concept of a Marvel universe.
How did you guys work together?
He was eager to change things and I was eager to learn. And we both had strong opinions. I think one of the reasons we got along was we were both up for a good argument. Arguments can be a very creative thing and a very good thing.
You left Marvel in a pretty high profile fashion twice. And I say high profile because your profile was very high and you were creatively cresting, twice with Daredevil. What caused you to leave that first time?
Well, I didn’t leave anybody. I chose to take a project to another publisher who was more amenable to kind of freedom I wanted to do it with. The message underneath all this was that it was important to demonstrate that talent is portable. Let me say that. When a publisher is releasing your work, that does not mean you’re saying an oath of allegiance to a military operation. It’s not a marriage.
Well, you came back, proceeded to do Born Again, then left again.
No, no. I proceeded to do work that was not for Marvel Comics. (Laughs.) We can’t keep on referring to me coming and going. I didn’t come and go. I stayed exactly where I am. I didn’t move where I lived. Nothing like that.
In any case, it was teased at the time that after Born Again there would be a Daredevil story with Walter Simonson.
It’s taken us an awful long time to get that done, I’ll admit to you. (Laughs.)
Is that ever going to happen?
Why not?
Uh, speaking of stories that never happened, what happened with the Doctor Strange run you were supposed to have with writer Roger Stern?
On that one, I really had come to realize that I was just dying to write my own material. And, I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to start writing and drawing my own comics and, you know, start being a cartoonist rather than just an illustrator.
Miller meeting director Destin Daniel Cretton at the premiere of Spider-Man:Brand New Day.
Yvonne Bennett
In the ’80s, with Dark Knight and Batman: Year One, you were elevated to art icon. You weren’t just comic book famous, you were art world famous. How did you handle that kind of fame?
As well and as poorly as anybody. (Laughs.) I’m not go into the long and gory biography of my life, but it does create all kinds of wonderful highs and dismal lows to go through that sort of thing. It transforms you.
The time of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and Maus is looked at like a revolutionary era at this point where comics were reinvented. How healthy is the comic art form now? Is the wall still being pushed?
Sure it is. I mean, it’s easy to look back on that time and say, “Wow, what a sunburst. That changed everything.” But in fact, that was a pretty small amount of work that we’re talking about that caused a big splash and that’s what people remember at the time. Because people tend to remember the stuff that really made a splash when they think back on a given period. We certainly have a pretty wildly diverse amount of stuff coming out now.
What do you like to read or what artist are you following?
I tend to hunt down the people whose work I like so I can work with them. I’m really, really excited by Peach Momoko’s work.
This year, there was upheaval at Dark Horse Entertainment, the home of your Sin City books. But you announced a new book that you’re writing, Invasive Species, with them. How did you decide to stay at Dark Horse for the new book and not take it elsewhere?
Well, the relationship was a good and strong one, and it served us all very well. I met with the people there. The philosophies of the company seemed to be close enough to what I’d always known them to be, and they certainly had the infrastructure to do a good job at it.
Going back to Sin City, the only thing happening now is the Western that is being drawn by Milo Manara, right?
Right now, yeah, but I’ve got a dozen ideas for new ones. Sin City is my life’s work, more than anything. Milo is well along. I just gotta teach him who to draw girls. (Laughs.)
Last question: What’s been your favorite character to write and draw after all this time?
I fall in love with each of them. I really do. I mean, you have kids?
Chris Rock, set to world premiere his latest film, Misty Green, in Toronto, will take part in an informal conversation at the September film festival, as will Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams.
Rock’s film for A24 follows an actress whose career has stalled years after her breakthrough role, as she fights for her second act. Rosalind Eleazar stars as Misty Green alongside Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace and Rock. Besides his breakout role in the gay hockey drama Heated Rivalry, Williams will also discuss in Toronto his upcoming star turn in the Crave and AMC+ supernatural mystery thriller Yaga, created by Kat Sandler.
TIFF organizers also announced In Conversation With… sessions for Korean actor and singer Lee Min-ho, who will present his latest film, The Assassin(s), in Toronto, and director Rachel Morrison, as she brings her sophomore feature, Love of Your Life, a romantic drama starring Margaret Qualley, Aaron Pierre and Patrick Schwarzenegger, to the film festival for a world premiere.
Andrew Scott is headed to Toronto with his latest movie, Simon Stone’s Elsinore, where he plays the late actor Ian Charleson in one of his final London West End stage roles as Hamlet, which he performed while living with AIDS.
Scott has had other standout roles in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, playing Moriarty in Sherlock, and credits for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon.
“This year’s In Conversation With… series brings together trailblazers and extraordinary storytellers for conversations that will offer audiences a deeper look at their craft and careers,” Anita Lee, chief programming officer at TIFF, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Toronto is giving Cody Fern’s directorial debut, Closing Night, a world premiere, with Naomi Watts, Sarah Paulson and Dianne Wiest starring in the Special Presentations title. There’s also a first look for Peter Ho-Sun Chan’s The Road Not Taken in the Special Presentations program, and a world bow for Bahman Ghobadi’s Trees are Watching film in the Centrepiece section.
Also in the Special Presentations program, Toronto booked an international premiere for Nanni Moretti’s It Will Happen Tonight after it opens in Venice; and there’s North American premieres for Stéphane Brizé’s 11th feature, Un bon petit soldat (A Good Little Soldier), led by Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent London; and It’s My Time, by Chinese director Bai Xue.
Bucking Fastard with Rooney Mara, Kate Mara.
Courtesy of Lena Herzog
The Special Presentations program also has Canadian premieres for Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, a dark comedy with John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA officers sent to Easter Island ahead of the 1973 coup in Chile; Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, the latest feature from the Grizzly Man director set for a Venice world premiere starring sisters Kate Mara and Rooney Mara, along with Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson; and Neil Peart: No One’s Disciple, a documentary about the late Rush drummer and lyricist from directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn.
There’s also Canadian premieres for Małgorzata Szumowska offbeat newlywed adventure The Idiot(s), starring Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn; and Guy Nattiv’s Liberation, starring Carrie Coon, Lily James and Bella Ramsey.
The latest film additions to the TIFF lineup are the last announced titles for a 51st edition to feature in all 293 titles. Oscar-winning CODA filmmaker Sian Heder’s upcoming feature Being Heumann will open the September event, while Yan Lanouette Turgeon’s Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend, a biopic about the late Canadian racing car driver Gilles Villeneuve, will close the annual film festival.
The Toronto Film Festival is set to run Sept. 10 to 20.
You’ve got to be either a saint or a masochist — maybe a little of both — to try to explain American partisans these days. Seek out figures on the far left or far right, after all, and you’ll get either criticism for snarking (from that side) or blowback for platforming (from the other side).
Of course such work is essential at a moment when too many of us listen only to our allies. That’s where the sainthood comes in.
All of this forms the unique, admirable and I-still-wouldn’t-want-to-be-him professional role of Donie O’Sullivan, the Millennial CNN reporter who travels around the county earnestly-wryly talking to hardcore figures on all sides, who have a noticeable tendency to open up to him. (That recently included an hourlong Hasan Piker-focused special on the Democrats’ insurgent left and a shorter package this week on the Minnesota gubernatorial candidacy of MAGA hero Mike Lindell on the Trumpian right.) In a time of echo chambers, O’Sullivan is both anomaly and antidote. He’s also a legacy journalist in an influencer world, its own Rubik’s Cube.
As an intense primary season comes down the homestretch — key races testing the far left and far right unfold both in Minnesota and Wisconsin Tuesday — O’Sullivan seems particularly well-positioned to document where he thinks the country is going. Not to mention describe what it’s like to hurl yourself into the spray with every segment. So The Hollywood Reporter hopped on a Zoom with the Ireland-born journalist to ask how he thinks America is doing, and what it’s doing to him.
You’ve covered extremism for a whole bunch of years now. How much more extreme is it in 2026?
I have been covering the fringe for a long time, and what strikes me as we head into the midterms is what was considered fringe on the left and right is now often part of a prominent debate in both parties. On the right you see what Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are doing, mounting an insurgency of their own. And you have that on the left too, which we’ve seen in some of the primary races. But I also think we have to be careful not to make a false equivalency between the parties. I often see Hasan Piker in the same breath as Nick Fuentes and people who do that aren’t taking the time to listen to either. A lot of speech on the far right is motivated by blatant antisemitism. Fuentes is saying Jews = bad. Endlessly. Unapologetically. If you listen to Piker he makes the point that ‘I’m not antisemitic I’m anti-Zionist.’ Some will argue the effect is the same. But I find fringes on the left really go to great lengths to try and separate Jews and Judaism from Israel.
Certainly both sides do seem to be capitalizing on the same sense of disaffection with government.
That’s what’s so striking — the similarities. I spend a lot of time talking to people on the left and spend a lot of time on the manosphere and in both feel people like the system is not working and want to do something about it. A lot has been exacerbated by feeling alone and on social media; that’s something I feel very there-but-for-the-grace-of-God about too, by the way. We’re up against trillion-dollar industries of algorithms and so it’s easy to fall into rabbit holes, whether it’s a conspiracy theory or just outrage.
You’ve seen that up close so many times — what’s an example of where that rabbit-holing really turned ugly, in your opinion?
A lot of young people think that what Luigi Mangione is alleged to have done is not that bad. An innocent man was assassinated walking in the streets of New York, and so it can be hard to understand that. But we should talk to those young people and find out why they don’t think it’s bad. Don’t let being offended by someone’s opinion stop you from talking to them. Because their opinion is not going to change. And I’m personally not interested in changing anyone’s opinion. But I’m a believer in hearing things and sharing things. I even think that about January 6 — there was a lot of disillusion and disaffection. Vigilante justice is not what we should be dong of course. But we should listen to why people feel the need for it.
Do you get how some people can see that as problematic? That there is a legitimizing effect when you have someone with outlandish theories or dangerous grievances on CNN?
That’s one of the biggest question on my beat, the platforming. And there are certainly cases where we don’t want to just amplify. But the mainstream media is no longer the gatekeeper of information, which means that a Hasan Piker or a Tucker Carlson have millions of people listening to them already. And the question is whether we can be part of the conversation beyond soundbites or just sit it out and do a disservice to audiences. I’ll choose the conversation. We also have the resources to fact-check these spaces, and I think that gives us a responsibility to cover them.
Do you think that makes a difference for all the people down the hole? Not rhetorical — genuinely asking.
I’m overwhelmingly pessimistic. But I do see an opportunity where journalism can shine if we adapt. We did an episode on someone who went down the rabbit hole, a liberal woman in the Bay Area. And it started with concerns about vaccines and soon she got pulled into homophobia and transphobia and racism and antisemitism. All kinds of horrific things. And she came out of it, and realized so much of what she was thinking about vaccines was colored through this terrible lens. So I think it can happen.
Your job is listening to people you don’t agree with. It’s not a role most people in this country seek out. What makes you do it?
The thing I’m most interested in in the world is having those difficult conversations. That’s what’s going to get us out of the dark situation we’re in.
You undertake this job at great risk to yourself. I know most journalists don’t want to be the story but the threats you get online are pretty eye-popping. Does it ever get easier? Do you still get scared?
I like to think I’m calm about it but this is easier said than done. The first time the full Twitter mob is on you it’s very scary. There’s doxxing, among many other things. I’m definitely in a space now where I’m fine with it. I speak to young journalists sometimes and my advice is that hate on social media is just part of the job now. I wouldn’t suggest anyone getting this business if they want to do impactful reporting and think that won’t be there. Not just covering extremism — covering anything.
Do any coping techniques help? Besides touching grass.
[Laughing] That definitely helps. Just getting offline. But a lot of it is I keep a point of being in touch with a lot of the subjects of our stories. Not everybody is happy of course but I do hear a lot that I was fair to them and that helps a lot. I want to be fair to them even if they’re not always going to be fair to us.
It does seem like a can’t-win situation — someone will always be mad. Which I know people say means you’re doing your job right but it also means that you’re doing your job unhappily?
The stuff I get in the most trouble on the internet is the stuff that in a way is most important. With this episode on the insurgent left we spoke to Hasan Piker and we spoke to James Carville. Just a really big story. And of course part of the left attacked me for speaking to Piker at all, and then people attacked me for speaking to Carville at all. They’d even cut up clips so that it looked like we were only talking to them. But we worked really hard to give everyone a hearing. [Ed note: Piker, at least, was happy with the segment, telling his livestreaming audience as he watched the special, “Donie’s the man. The Irish guy. He’s very cool, in spite of the fact that he’s at CNN.”] And that’s something we should be doing more of, as a profession, giving everyone a hearing; that’s the job of a journalist. To get beyond the tables in New York and DC and the Acela car to hear what a lot of different people think.
One proof of that is Lindell. Not someone whose election conspiracy theories I or many of us agree with. And yet I came away from your segment kind of liking the guy, someone who has a great backstory as a former addict who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and genuinely seems affable. You can almost forget all the dangerous stuff he’s spouting to Donald Trump’s glee. But of course we shouldn’t forget that, especially as he stands a good chance today of becoming the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota.
Lindell is a very likable person and I do think unlike a lot of the MAGA guys who don’t believe the shit they’re saying he truly does believe what he’s saying. But is also doing a lot of dangerous and frankly dumb stuff. But the goal is to understand people. Someone on social media will say ‘why are you humanizing this person?’ To which my response is ’they’re human.’ And dehumanizations are the reason we’re in such bad shape today. I haven’t had the opportunity to interview Nick Fuentes one-on-one yet but from the unguarded moments I’ve seen he’s a terribly insecure, sad Gen Z person and we should show that.
Is that the end goal then? Understanding not just the ideology but the humans behind it?
I think the goal is helping us run a society. Our job as a country is to change the [feeling of disaffection] and give people a system of government that actually feels like it’s doing someone for them. That makes them become engaged instead of just cheering on violence. That’s what we’re trying to do on-air.
And that makes them feel like the other side is not out to get them.
Totally. You know, one thing that comes up a lot is the viewers who disagree with who I’m interviewing will say ‘you made someone look like a fool’ and then viewers who agree say ‘he sounds smart.’ Their reactions can say a lot more about them than they do the subject.
What about from the subjects themselves — you say they feel you’re fair but you do challenge them in the moment and you certainly do in the voiceover later. Plus there’s the fact that you’re from CNN. Do you get a lot of pushback from them?
I think a lot of people want to be heard and want to talk. I’ve interviewed supporters of election-denial claims who say ‘I don’t agree with you but thank you for having the conversation with me.’
How do all your reporting excursions leave you feeling about our prospects as a functional society? Is there hope for reconciliation or not really? Do people want nuance?
I think we’re in a bit of trouble. [Gives a knowing-bitter laugh]. But I think people do want nuance. You’ve seen that with the success of podcasters like Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman. People will listen to hours of a discussion. Rogan is so meta — he’ll go back to ancient civilizations and then even talk about alien civilizations. And so many other podcasts too. A lot of the conversations are dumb and uninformed, yes. But there’s still an appetite.
But that’s a form of algorithmic engagement too, isn’t it, following one singular leader because he knows how to press the conspiracy-theory button or get us outraged?
I think that’s right but what this interest also shows is that there’s a huge opportunity for journalists to have these longform conversations too. Because a news organization that comes in to take advantage of this [appetite] has also done their research and anticipated questions and is preparing for pushback.
You’re more optimistic than I am that what people want is fact-based, clarity-minded journalism. It feels to me too often that it’s more attractive for people to get mad and reductive.
That’s the challenge of a big outlet: how do we create stuff that’s compelling and gives the space to have these conversations and maybe even can go viral, but isn’t conspiracy theory or just tawdry. I don’t know that we can completely avoid all of that. But I think we can get closer. It’s all a question of quantity. We don’t do a story [on extremists] every single day, nor should we. But also when we discuss these things, let’s really discuss them.
Give me a prediction on where this all goes, particularly on the left. Are we really witnessing a sea change? Or is this something that rhymes more with 2018, where there’s a Democratic insurgency midway through Trump’s term and then it dies down two years later when he’s gone from office.
The big difference between now and 2018 is that the left has a massive independent media and infrastructure that keeps getting bigger. Pod Save America and Hasan Piker and everything in-between. The MAGA-verse has had this kind of scale for a decade, and look at what it did for them. Now the left has it. I think two years from now when we’re in the middle of presidential debates the effect will be huge. I don’t think it’s settling anytime soon.
