Interviews

Michaela Coel’s incisive new show, I May Destroy You, is an uncompromising drama that deftly tackles themes of trauma, sexual consent, and relationships. Inspired by Coel’s own experience of sexual assault, the HBO series mixes devastating moments of distress with laugh-out-loud comedy and a searingly honest look at modern life in the UK.

Last year’s Venice Film Festival got a bracing blast of fresh air from Shannon Murphy’s directorial debut, Babyteeth. The dynamic, devastatingly curtailed coming-of-age dramedy was adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her Australian stage play of the same name and earned a Golden Lion nomination for Best Film as well as the Best Young Actor Marcello Mastroianni award for its star, Toby Wallace.

What if history could be rewritten?  In Netflix's limited series Hollywood Ryan Murphy reinvents the studio system of the 1940s. Two-time Tony nominee Jeremy Pope plays Archie Coleman, an aspiring screenwriter facing prejudice because of his race and sexuality.

There’s a pivotal scene in the upcoming thriller Defending Jacob, in which Michelle Dockery and Chris Evans, who play the parents of a young boy accused of murdering his classmate, are ambushed by a barrage of news cameras and paparazzi. Dockery, 38, is all too familiar with this kind of jarring attention since landing her breakout role as Lady Mary Crawley in the hit series Downton Abbey.

A television series about subjects like infertility and adoption wouldn’t generally inspire comedic material, however, Trying, starring Rafe Spall and Esther Smith shines a light on these so-called taboo topics, and does so with humor and sensitivity as it traces the lives of this very charming British couple.   Offscreen, Smith’s parents, both if them teachers, raised Esther and her sister Rachel in England’s West Midlands.

Self-exploration has become familiar to Jason Segel. He created the AMC series Dispatches from Elsewhere, about people searching for who they are.

It feels hopeful and exciting, in these sad days of a worldwide pandemic that has taken so many lives, to interview – even virtually – two confident and articulate teenage girls each of whom has a starring role in a television series. Lexi Underwood plays Pearl, Kerry Washington’s daughter in Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu), based on the 2017 novel by Celeste Ng.

Some of the most original writing of late has been found in series that posit parallel realities and alternate histories. Shows like Hunters, Plot Against America, and Watchmen use this device (the technical term is uchronic) to imagine alternate histories of the past to effect powerful social commentaries, with outlandish – sometimes supernatural - stories which nevertheless resonate powerfully with the present.

As she told us in this interview, having the opportunity to play Velma in a Scooby-Doo film was far away from her wildest dreams when she was a kid. But certainly, Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez has already proved that everything is possible if she really goes for it.

Olivia Munn has starred in several movies and TV shows, including Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, X-Men: Apocalypse, and The Lego Ninjago Movie.  With plenty more work on the horizon, she’s currently starring in the Netflix comedy Love Wedding Repeat, in which she plays an American war journalist who reconnects with her former roommate’s brother at a lavish wedding.