Back to One
A podcast about acting -- just the work. by Peter Rinaldi
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“The Only Thing We Have Is the Moment”: Betsey Brown (Back to One, Episode 250)
My first encounter with the work of actor, writer, director Betsey Brown was her captivating and shocking performance in The Scary of Sixty-First. Then, in her first feature film Actors, she and her brother Peter Vack play over-the-top versions of themselves in a wildly fictional, yet super-personal exploration of their relationship that boldly pulls out all the cinematic stops. It’s the kind of rare indie that gives you hope for the future of film. In this episode, she talks about the aspects of the acting craft that are central to her—patience, relaxation, fearlessness, appreciation, the importance of the present moment—plus… Read more
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“I Don’t Care if People Don’t Like My Characters”: Emily Meade (Back To One, Episode 249)
Emily Meade is best known for her roles in the HBO shows The Deuce, The Leftovers, and Boardwalk Empire. Her latest project, the Amazon series Dead Ringers, premieres on April 21st. She became an advocate for intimacy coordinators on set following a lack thereof on The Deuce, where she portrayed a sex worker. After urging HBO to hire an intimacy coordinator, her advocation ignited the use of intimacy coordinators on all HBO sets and beyond, creating a new standard in Hollywood. In this episode, she talks about needing to base her characters on real-life people she knows, how being a… Read more
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“You Alone Are Not Making Anything Happen; It’s a Collective Experience”: Julio César Cedillo (Back To One, Episode 248)
For three decades, Julio César Cedillo has been delivering authentic, nuanced, fully realized performances in films and television series such as Sicario, Cowboys and Aliens, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Narcos Mexico, and the new Netflix film Chupa, to name just a few. In this hour, he generously shares what he’s learned from being a “lunchbox actor,” doing this work he loves. He talks about why, as an actor who happens to be Mexican, his first read of a script is a “search for traps.” Through stories detailing his experiences on set, he explains why it’s better to ask for forgiveness… Read more
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“This Little Thing, That’s Like the Size of a Walnut, and the Width of Our Thumbnail, Can Do So Much.” Voice: A Special Episode of Back To One
On this special episode, we’re talking all about voice! Neda Lahidji is an actor, singer, vocal health coach, voice teacher and a certified vocal health first aider. She specializes in the voices and vocal health of actors, VO actors, and singers, including any vocal athletes in the film industry as well as directors who use their voice tremendously throughout production. She talks about the different factors that affect the voice, gives us techniques to help maintain a vocal athlete’s optimal vocal health, shares her own stories of various vocal ups and downs, explains why it’s almost all mental, and much… Read more
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“I Don’t Want To Know Anything. I Just Want to Listen”: The Bear Series Regular Edwin Lee Gibson (Back To One, Episode 246)
Edwin Lee Gibson’s stage career spans 40 years and over 100 U.S. and international theater productions. On television he is currently reprising his role as series regular “Ebraheim” in season 2 of FX’s hit series The Bear. On this episode, he talks about the importance of listening, “letting the character find me,” working with the late Peter Brook, cultivating a relationship with fear, how his stutter actually made him dig deeper into the study of speech, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. And if you’re… Read more
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“Yes He Was a Visionary, but He Pissed a Lot of People Off”: Spinning Gold Star Jeremy Jordan (Back To One, Episode 245)
Jeremy Jordan is probably best known for his Tony and Grammy-nominated portrayal of Jack Kelly in Newsies on Broadway, as well as his many roles on television including series regulars on CW’s Supergirl, NBC’s Smash and Disney Channel’s Tangled. And now he leads a star-studded cast as the tenacious record industry giant Neil Bogart in the epic new feature film Spinning Gold. On this episode, he talks about how finding a character’s physicality and where they hold tension informs his preparation, the importance of letting every single moment of a performance tell the story, why he’s still getting used to… Read more
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“I Know This Woman. I Have Her in My Body”: Sophie von Haselberg (Back To One, Episode 244)
Sophie von Haselberg stars as Sissy St. Claire in Amanda Kramer’s psychedelic fever dream musical Give Me Pity! It’s part mock 70’s television special, part monologue film, and requires the creation of a bigger-than-life persona on screen, and von Haselberg carries it all and delivers a virtuoso performance. On this episode, she takes us from Kramer “pulling me from the ether,” through extensive preparation, getting the character “into my body,” a frustrating COVID pause, on to the live theater-like 5 day shoot, and how she doesn’t think she would have “ever allowed myself to dream that something like this would… Read more
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“You Have To Live and Breathe This”: Marta Milans (Back To One, Episode 243)
Spanish American actor Marta Milans reprises her role as Mama Rosa in the second installment of the Shazam saga, which hits theaters March 17th. If you binged White Lines during the pandemic, you appreciated her work in that Netflix hit series. On this episode, we go way back to when she played Goneril in King Lear…at age 8! She takes us on a journey of her life as an actor, a job she says you cannot do well unless you “must do it to breathe.” She tells us the reason why language comes easy for her, how music plays a… Read more
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“The Reality of a Life of Acting All the Time Is Different From the Perception”: Mia Wasikowska (Back To One, Episode 242)
Mia Wasikowska’s first project in The States was the HBO series In Treatment. She was just 16 years old, but if you watched it then, you were probably in awe, like me, marveling at this seemingly fully formed acting artist, performing, with nuance and subtlety, well beyond her years. She continued to wow us with stellar work in Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Alice In Wonderland, Stoker, The Double, Tracks, Damsel and Bergman Island, to name a few. Her latest is an absolutely beautiful film called Blueback. In this woefully brief episode, she talks about the underwater acting she had to do… Read more
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“I Kind of Wanted To Keep Doing It All, and Fortunately They Kept Letting Me”: Todd Stashwick (Back To One, Episode 241)
You might know Todd Stashwick from The Riches or 12 Monkeys (the Syfy series, where he played Deacon), but you definitely know him from his guest star work on countless shows, both dramas and comedies, spanning more than two decades. And now he plays Captain Liam Shaw in the new season of Picard. On this episode, he talks about how the little boy Star Trek fan in him leapt for joy when he sat in his captain’s chair for the first time, while the “all business” actor in him had to focus on the work at hand. Plus we discuss… Read more
