Megan Hilty on the End of ‘Smash’ and What’s Next for Her

In the end, Smash is, at best, an imperfect television series.  It took an interesting industry — the behind-the-scenes creation of Broadway productions — and incredibly talented singers, like Megan Hilty, yet somehow failed to make it interesting to general audiences or even Broadway diehards.  That is the main reason why Smash is wrapping up its run at the end of this season (only the show’s second).  Hilty, who played the often mean Broadway hopeful Ivy Lynn, spoke to iDesign about the end of the series

Hilty expresses hope that fans of the show will be satisfied by the series finale — though it wasn’t entirely written that way.  She says, “We have the greatest fans of the show and they’re very, very loyal, but I hope that the season finale is satisfying for people.  I feel like it will be because they kind wrote it just in case it didn’t get renewed, that it would wrap everything up. I think people will be pleased with it. It won’t be like ‘what would have happened?’” Read more

The Actor’s Guide to the Twitter-verse

Written by Dallas Travers, CEC

If you’re like me, you’ve realized that Twitter holds a lot of potential for relationship building in the business because of the direct line of communication it offers you.

Everyday, I see more actors, agents, casting directors and filmmakers engage in powerful online communication using Twitter as their tool.

Everyday, I also see a lot of actors waste time tweeting away and wondering why their followers aren’t responding.

Well, there’s a right way and a wrong way to tweet, so let me share two easy tips to help you make the most out of your tweets. Read more

Olga Kurylenko on How She and Terrence Malick Created Her Character in ‘To the Wonder’

Olga Kurylenko is ready to prove she’s more than just a pretty face.  Although she got her start modeling and starred as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, she’s hoping to branch out more.

“That’s not what an actor hopes to play,” she said in an interview with The New York Post. “They’ve mostly been dull and just arm candy.”

With her new role in Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, Kurylenko did as much preparation as possible.  “I had to read three Russian novels: Anna Karenina, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov,” she recalled.  “They were very tiny little novels.  After that it was just discussions about what I drew from the books, how we can compose the character, and what similarities are there between [her character] and the different female characters in those books.” Read more

Interview: Johnny Ray Gill on ‘Rectify’, Booking ‘Harry’s Law’ Right Out of College and Making “Bold Choices”

Johnny Ray Gill graduated from University of California, San Diego in 2010 with an MFA in Acting. While commuting back and forth to LA looking for work and a decent place to live, he auditioned for an episode of NBC’s Harry’s Law. The producers liked his work so much, that 1-episode role quickly turned into a 10-episode arc.

Since then, he hasn’t stopped working. He’s appeared on Bones, a couple of episodes of True Blood and now, he’s starring in The Sundance Channel’s new series, Rectify. The show is about a death row inmate named Daniel Holden (Aden Young), who has to put his life back together after DNA evidence reveals his innocence. Through flashbacks, Daniel relives his prison years and his friendship with another inmate, Kerwin Whitman, played by Johnny.

In this interview, Johnny talks about his education, Rectify and his advice to actors!

Rectify airs on Mondays at 10pm on The Sundance Channel Read more

Q & A: Stephanie Leonidas and Grant Bowler Talk Syfy’s ‘Defiance’

Defiance is one hugely ambitious show because for the first time ever, a TV show and video game will exist concurrently in a shared universe, influencing and impacting one anothers outcome. It all sounds pretty damn cool to me.

Defiance is set in the year 2046. It’s a new Earth and with over thirty different Alien races, it’s also a different Earth. Defiance is now what used to be St. Louis and when the mysterious Nolan (Grant Bowler) and Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas) settle in, things begin to happen that threaten the peacefulness the town has enjoyed for years.

Grant Bowler and Stephanie Leonidas took some time out of their schedule for a really cool Q&A where they talked about all aspects of the show; green screen and the special effects, the extensive makeup and all of the acting challenges they faced while shooting.

Defiance airs on Mondays at 9/8c on Syfy Read more

DreamCatcher Entertainment Celebrates Its 5th Anniversary With Two Benefits in New York City

One thing you can always give Broadway performers is that they’re almost always willing to support their fellow performers. 

May 20th will see a headline benefit performance in New York City by Kevin Cole, known as America’s Pianist, who has played in symphonies across the country and in solo concerts and is well-known for his renditions of the Gershwin songbook.  He will be joined by three special guests from Broadway: Brian d’Arcy James (Shrek; Next to Normal; TV’s Smash), Klea Blackhurst (Everything the Traffic Will Allow), and Ryan VanDenBoom (Annie).

  Read more

Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley join Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the Pinter/Beckett Repertory on Broadway

Tony Award winners Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley will join Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in the limited season repertoire of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Directed by Sean Mathias, the performances will begin Saturday, October 26th at the Cort Theatre on Broadway.

This limited season will run for 14 weeks only. Read more

All Michael Shannon Wants is to Appear on David Letterman

Michael Shannon‘s rise from relative unknown to Oscar nominee to blockbuster movie super-villain has been long, but not as tough as some of his friends suggest.  Nonetheless, in a conversation with The New York Times he reveals that the reputation he’s gotten from his dark roles and rumors about his past have prevented him from fulfilling one of his dreams… appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman.

First, Shannon points to the fact that despite his stardom he’s often on the wrong side of luck.  For example, the one time Shannon was up for an Oscar (for Revolutionary Road) he was nominated in one of those years that the decision was a forgone conclusion: it was the same year Heath Ledger posthumously won the Oscar for The Dark Knight.  In fact, since Shannon was told countless times after being nominated that he wouldn’t beat Ledger, he did what any of us would do — get drunk for the ceremony.  He confesses, “I’d had a lot of gin. I was pickled. From the time I was nominated to the awards, it was like a steady litany of every human being on Earth telling me how I wasn’t going to win. It was like being beaten by broom handles. The bus driver being like, ‘You’re not going to win.’ The guy selling me my paper, the guy giving me my coffee, my publicist. By the time I got there, I was like, If I win I’m going to have to say something like ‘praise Satan’ and talk like Linda Blair from The Exorcist.” Read more

Yo, Adrian! Rocky is comin’ to Broadway!

Rocky, the new musical based of the classic film that starred Sylvester Stallone, will come to Broadway next February, 2014.

Preview performances begin February and the show will officially open in March at Broadway’s historic Winter Garden Theatre (1634 Broadway, New York, NY). 

The musical received its world premiere last fall in Hamburg, Germany, where it earned unanimous critical raves and continues to play to packed houses.   

“I couldn’t be more proud or more excited about this production and how my original story of Rocky Balboa has been brought to spectacular life onstage,” said Oscar-nominated Rocky screenwriter and star Sylvester Stallone.  “The story of Rocky was very much like my life at the time – starting out with nothing, having to fight for roles and recognition.  So I put those feelings into the body of a boxer and I had no idea there were so many millions of people that felt the same way.   Alex Timbers and the entire creative team have not only honored that original impulse, but have made his story as exciting, heart-breaking, and inspiring as it was when Rocky first went the distance on screen.” Read more

Q & A: Jim Rash Talks Writing His First Episode of ‘Community’

If you have an Oscar-winning screenwriter as an actor on your show, why wouldn’t you ask that actor to pitch you a few ideas?

That’s exactly what happened with Jim Rash. After winning an Oscar for The Descendants (which he shares with his co-writer, Nat Faxon), Community producers asked Rash if he had any story ideas he’d like to pitch. He pitched a few, one landed and now we have tonight’s episode, “Basic Human Anatomy”.

Rash said even though the script came out to about 30 pages, it doesn’t “decrease the challenge,” he said. But, since he’s lived with the characters for so long, he knows their voices which made it “fun.”

In the interview, Rash talks about writing the episode, writing dialogue for himself, the behind the scenes turmoil of the firing of Dan Harmon and if he was cool with the cast changing his words.

Community airs on Thursdays at 8/7c  on NBC Read more

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