His recent work is HBO’s Coastal Elites, a series of monologues written by playwright Paul Rudnick and starring Bette Midler, Issa Rae, Sarah Paulson, Kaitlyn Dever, and Dan Levy. “Mostly it’s five people, none of whom are particularly elite. Which is one of the funny things I like about what Paul did, was use that sort of buzzword, ‘coastal elites’, which is almost like saying basket of deplorables about the Trump followers. It’s a way that people on the right lump all people who disagree with them into being, ‘Well, they disagree with us because they’re the coastal elites,’ and it’s meant to be a disparaging comment, but it’s really about five people who love America and love, again, the ideal version of what government can be like and what politics can be like, but are now completely unraveled by what’s going on in the world.”

It is a contemporary story that allows the audience to eavesdrop on each person’s attempt to understand. ‘It’s almost like they would talk to a therapist or be in an AA meeting or something, except it’s Apocalypse Anonymous instead of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each talks to the camera, and we filmed it in a pandemic style, and they’re darkly funny, but about the pain and sort of heartbreak of what all of us are going through these days.”

Charlize Theron in Bombshell