Women in Entertainment

“You can’t underestimate the power of women role models. ” Says Dame Pippa Harris, a producer, and one of the founders of Neal Street Productions along with Sam Mendes and Caro Newling.

Inspired by the memoirs of a former nurse, Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife reflects her life as a midwife at a nursing convent in a deprived part of London during the late 1950s and early 1960s. But really it’s personal stories told against the backdrop of social change, a time when men and women are starting to listen to themselves and question the status quo.

“I’m the executive producer and writer on Underground. I’ve been mistaken for a PA”, notes Misha Green who has written for such testosterone-drenched shows as FX’s Sons of Anarchy and NBC’s Heroes.

Underground cleverly uses costume to highlight the deconstruction of an individual through ownership and how identity surfaces even in the most dire constraints. Costume designer Karyn Wagner led an incredible crew in the creation of a palette of power and powerless: for instance, the plum throughout connotes the Mistress’s choice to clothe her slaves in a color that matches the decor of her house.

One in a series profiling women working in Hollywood today.          “I’m a stubborn mule.

One in an occasional series featuring prominent women working in Hollywood today.   “It’s bittersweet.

First in an occasional series featuring prominent women working in Hollywood today.   Nancy Meyers is the most financially successful female filmmaker of all time.

The overarching theme of Downton Abbey was in a sense always the inexorable passage of time, and the end of the gilded Edwardian era. So it is as fitting as it is inevitable that the hugely successful and multiple Golden Globe nominated series itself would come to an end.

Ryan Murphy’s new anthology series American Crime Story has become must see TV with its take on the best-known celebrity trial ever. As a singularly unifying moment, the “OJ trial” stands alongside 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination as one of the defining “I remember where I was” moments in American popular culture.