Actors
Interviews - Actors
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The Woman King Star Lashana Lynch on the Soil, the Sisterhood and Making History
Last year, Lashana Lynch made history as 007 in No Time To Die, this year she uses history to energize her powerful performance in The Woman King. In this episode she talks about how filming that movie “barefoot, on that soil,” surrounded by a truly supportive sisterhood, was so significant to her performance. She explains why she doesn’t have (or even want) a go-to preparation process, what choosing the hard road of avoiding stereotypical roles has done for her career, why she cherishes outstanding assistant directors, and much more. Plus she gives us a peek at her role as Miss […]
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“Listening Became My Prime Directive” Back to One, Episode 217: Adrian Pasdar
Adrian Pasdar has experienced a lot in his nearly 40 years as a working actor and in this episode he generously shares the wisdom he’s gleaned. Some of the highlights in his credits include Top Gun, Near Dark, Carlitos Way, Heroes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, and perhaps the most talked about single-season series of the ’90s, Profit. Not to mention he’s the voice of Iron Man. He talks about how listening became his prime directive as an actor, his search for truth in performance (and the search for a better word than “truth”), “the method” as protective element, and why he […]
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Back to One, Episode 213: Angourie Rice
She’s only 21, but Australian actor Angourie Rice has earned respect in Hollywood for stacking up diverse roles in The Nice Guys, The Beguiled, Jasper Jones, Mare of Easttown, not to mention a few Spider-Man movies. Now she has her first starring role in Honor Society for Paramount+. She talks about how it helped her to be able to relate so much to her character in that film, and why talking directly to the camera was oddly easy. We chat about her podcast, The Community Library, which is a celebration of literature and storytelling of all kinds. This leads to […]
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“We Shot Seven Parties in 20 Days in an Abandoned Mall”: Cooper Raiff on Cha Cha Real Smooth
Titled after the hit party song no child of the early 2000s could escape, Cooper Raiff’s second feature, Cha Cha Real Smooth, originated as a love letter to parents of disabled children. Inspired by the perserverance of his own family (Raiff’s younger sister does not possess the ability to walk nor speak), Raiff’s screenplay eventually grew to become the story of Andrew (Raiff), a 22-year-old Tulane University graduate who moves back in with his brother (Evan Assante), mom (Leslie Mann), and her lover (Brad Garrett) in Livingston, New Jersey. Working a dead-end job and with his girlfriend in Barcelona on […]
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Back to One, Episode 207: James Scully
James Scully plays Charlie, love interest to Bowen Yang’s Howie, in the new film Fire Island, a touching, hilarious, and entirely queer take on Pride and Prejudice, written by and co-starring Joel Kim Booster, and directed by Andrew Ahn. Scully talks about the imposter syndrome that infected the cast, how sometimes when material is so relatable it’s actually hard to gauge if you’re hitting it right, why having a queer director actually improves the work, and how Ahn specifically led the way so thoughtfully and effectively. Plus much more! Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, […]
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Back to One, Episode 206: Rupert Friend
Among many appealing qualities as an actor, Rupert Friend certainly has “range.” His two most recent roles are James Whitehouse—elitist, upper-class British politician in David E. Kelley’s Netflix limited series Anatomy Of A Scandal; and The Grand Inquisitor—blowhard Star Wars bad guy in Obi-Wan Kenobi. He’s probably best known for playing Peter Quinn on a few seasons of Homeland, which got him an Emmy nomination. On this episode, he talks about why his preparation process is more “uncovering” than “building,” how energy management has served him well, the gift of being allowed to “fail safely,” and the most important thing […]
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Back to One, Episode 202: Alison Pill
I was lucky to catch Alison Pill on Broadway, 16 years ago, in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and then became enamored with her work in shows like In Treatment, The Newsroom, Devs, and movies like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Milk, to name just a few. Nowadays she plays Dr. Agnes Jurati on the series Picard, and stars with Sarah Gadon in Michael McGowan’s new film All My Puny Sorrows. She shares what she believes to be the secret ingredient that made that film work, and talks about how adopting a physicality for a character is foundational to her […]
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Welcome to the Dollhouse: Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney on Strawberry Mansion
In the year 2035, dream-auditing is a prolific but thankless business, especially for James Preble (Kentucker Audley). Scrummaging through an individual’s archived dreams via an endless collection of VHS tapes, Preble finds himself constantly stuck between mundane reality and the elusive world of someone’s REM cycle. The primary goal of slumming through this government job? Dream taxation. One afternoon, as he visits the home of Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller and, in the dream world, Grace Glowicki), a welcoming but mysterious dream tax evader, the lines between consciousness and unconsciousness grow blurred. A love story, a comedy, a 1980s children’s fantasy […]
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Echoes
What is a sound if only you can hear it? And if you heard such a sound, would you think it came from outside, somehow bypassing everyone else as it enters your brain? Or would you think it emanated from within, never escaping your own field of perception and thus becoming your own private mystery—or, as Memoria director Apichatpong Weerasethakul writes, your own “sonic companion?” The Cannes-premiering Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton and now in release from NEON, originated from the director’s musings about his own auditory disturbances, a series of enormous bangs that erupted in his sleep and would put […]
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Back to One, Episode 186: Eric Roberts
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Eric Roberts will soon have more credits as an actor than anyone else who has ever lived anywhere in the world. An intensity matched only by raw talent on display in films like Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Runaway Train established him as a respectable actor’s actor in Hollywood. And, as he talks about in this episode, once video replaced film, and more people began shooting, they wanted Eric Roberts in their movies. And once he became privy to how many offers were coming in, he started saying yes. Work begot work fairly […]
