Interviews

After winning three Golden Globes and becoming one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Aussie actress Cate Blanchett is the latest performer to gravitate towards the small screen, appearing in not one but two limited TV series in 2020. Her first role was playing conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly in the limited series Mrs.

From Ugly Betty and Devious Maids to Whiskey Cavalier and beyond, Ana Ortiz has been a firm fixture on the small screen for close to two decades. Alongside a variety of big-screen roles and animated projects, the acclaimed actress is also no stranger to live theater across the globe.

Steven Soderbergh, 57, is always on the cutting edge. 30-plus years after the Sundance debut of Sex, Lies, and Videotape, 20 years since his Best Director Oscar for Traffic and almost 10 years from the prophetic Contagion, the director, writer, producer, and cinematographer is promoting Beats, by young director Brian Welsh.

Netflix’s four-part dramatic TV-series Unorthodox is partly a true story, based on author Deborah Feldman’s memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, published in 2012. But when Alexa Karolinski and Anna Winger adapted the book into a TV-series, the three women all agreed to transform the story and make it partly fictitious.

Will Ferrell got the idea for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga in 1998 when he was visiting Sweden for the first time with his then-future wife, Viveca Paulin. He was amazed by the European song contest and was captivated by how theatrical it was and how excitingly the voting process was presented.

Hong Chau (Downsizing) resumes her role in the second season of the Amazon series, Homecoming, as caseworker Audrey Temple, now promoted from secretary to the person in charge at the wellness-based company, Geist Group, the corporate entity behind the military project. This Golden Globe-nominated psychological thriller, which sees Janelle Monáe in the starring role in the upcoming season (replacing Julia Roberts), attracted Globe-winning actor Chris Cooper, who joins the cast as Leonard Geist, the mysterious and eccentric CEO of Geist Group.

Award-winning actor, director, writer, and producer Noel Clarke has appeared in international blockbusters such as Star Trek: Into Darkness and Mute, as well as a string of iconic British dramas, including Doctor Who and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He’s been described as a ‘one-man production machine’ by critics and he’s also the brains behind the acclaimed movie trilogy: Kidulthood, Adulthood, and Brotherhood.

The Eurovision Song Contest the beloved, excessive, outlandish song contest held annually since 1956 ( with the exception of this year's cancelation due to Covid-19) and best known as the launchpad for ABBA's worldwide success, is ripe fodder for Will Ferrell's new Netflix comedy, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga where Ferrell plays the buffoonish Lars Erickssong, a mediocre Icelandic singer who obsesses about winning Eurovision with his singing partner Sigrit (Rachel McAdams) and yearns to prove his worth to his sour, overbearing father (played by Pierce Brosnan).  With approval from the organizers of Eurovision, the movie directed by Wedding Crashers’ David Dobkin, may lampoon the contest but still manages to pay homage to its odd spectacle.

In Orange is the New Black, Diane Guerrero had the biggest opportunity in her career as an actress, and she has used it well. As the character Maritza Ramos, she created one of the most sensitive characters in a world of tough women; later, in Jane the Virgin, she transformed herself into Lina, Gina Rodriguez's best friend.

Legendary now seems a fitting term for Whoopi Goldberg, twice a Golden Globe winner for The Color Purple (in 1986) and Ghost (1991 – also an Oscar), the first woman to host the Academy Awards, in 1994, social and political activist since the Comic Relief era and now a TV personality and very vocal both in the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. And she is truly irrepressible wielding the resolve that led her to send an Instagram message to Pope Francis: “Good morning Your Holiness,” she wrote.