“It’s just amazing and really humbling,” Preston said. “I didn’t expect it at this point. I’ve had an incredible career that I’m very grateful for. I wasn’t pining for it, but the fact that it has happened at this point in my life makes me appreciate it
more. When you have decades of being on set and being a part of this business, you have a deeper, bigger perspective on the whole thing. It is quite humbling.” 

The series, an extension of Michelle King and Robert King’s “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight” universe, transplants the character from Chicago to New York, where she is on a special assignment to shadow the NYPD.

Elsbeth’s new boss, Captain C.W. Wagner (Wendell Pierce), doesn’t know what to make of this garishly dressed outsider, nor do the disapproving detectives whom she eventually shows up in case after case. The “howdunit” drama has been a hit with audiences; the Season 1 finale drew more viewers than the finale of ABC’s wildly popular “9-1-1” the same night. Preston has a theory about why Elsbeth is connecting. 

“It harkens back to Columbo, Sherlock Holmes or even ‘Murder, She Wrote’ tonally,” she said. “But it’s fresh and new as well because we don’t expect a character like Elsbeth to be at the center of a show like that. This is a woman who’s taken herself out of one world and put herself in another, a fish-out-of-water situation. It’s like a circus has dropped down in a police procedural.”

Elsbeth’s colorful, radically off-trend wardrobe is a trademark of the character. (She even inspires her own haute couture fashion line in the season finale.) Her clothing functions as a cloak that gives cops and culprits a false sense of superiority over her. Much like her ostensibly diffident demeanor, the clothes invite people to underestimate her at their own peril.

“People see it as silly or something not to be taken seriously,” she said with a smile. “She can then really turn on them and show her — pun intended — true colors. They don’t see her coming.”

The character’s signature look, which includes bold tones and patterns and maybe a few bows, almost got a makeover for the series. At first, costume designer Dan Lawson, who has always dressed Elsbeth, wanted to make her more of a
traditional leading lady by giving her a more elegant silhouette now that she’s in New York. But the Kings vetoed that, saying, as Preston explained, “‘Absolutely not. We want her to stay exactly the way she is.’”

Part of keeping Elsbeth the same was making sure her often annoying tendency to pry was undimmed. “She knows that she is odd and that can be disconcerting to people,” Preston said. “She is unapologetic in her zeal and her vulnerability and
her flaws and her genius. She doesn’t try to hide it. That’s inspiring.”

The character becomes a friend and a mentor to younger police officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson), one of the few on the force to recognize Elsbeth’s abilities. She’s game to help Elsbeth act out potential murder scenarios, an example of her unorthodox investigation methods.

Like “Columbo,” the juiciest role in each episode is the killer, and in the first season, everyone from Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Blair Underwood turned up to bump people off. At times, we even find ourselves rooting for the villain—like Gina Gershon’s diva-esque plastic surgeon or André De Shields sophisticated fashion icon—to get away with it.

For Preston, the caliber of the guest actors “Elsbeth” is attracting has everything to do with the quality of the show’s scripts. “These characters are so fully drawn and we get to do these long dialogue scenes that you just don’t get to do that much on television,” she said. “We’re doing these six, seven pages of dialogue. They get trimmed in the edit, but for us, as actors, it looks like we’re doing a little play each week.”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Carrie Preston Says ‘Elsbeth’ Success Is ‘Really Humbling’: ‘I Didn’t Expect It at This Point’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“I’m so happy,” he said. “I’m proud of our team.”

“Shōgun” is the second miniseries to be adapted from the James Clavell book of the same name, following NBC’s Emmy-winning 1980 version starring Richard Chamberlain. The new series begins in 1600, when an English seafaring pilot named John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) lands in feudal Japan.

Initially, Blackthorne plans to make the Japanese his allies and recruit them into England’s war against the Portuguese. But the more time he spends in this new country, the more he gets sucked into the political maneuvering of Lord Toranaga (Sanada) as he plots against the ruling regents, and the more he falls for his translator, Lady Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai).

Whereas the first “Shōgun” adaptation was praised in the United States but met with mixed reactions in Japan, the reception for FX’s new epic has been warm in both countries. In its first six days of streaming, the first episode racked up 9 million views globally, making it the No. 1 scripted series in the world and the biggest debut ever for FX.

The 10-episode show has also pushed Sanada, a celebrated actor, producer and martial artist in Japan who has appeared in several U.S. productions over the past 20-plus years (including “The Last Samurai,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “John Wick: Chapter 4”) to the very center of the Hollywood spotlight. The same is true for Anna Sawai, whose previous projects include “F9” and “Pachinko.”

“It’s been so surreal. I don’t know how everyone was feeling about it, but I was not expecting it to be this talked about,” said Sawai, who was particularly surprised by the way American audiences have embraced a series that is 70% in subtitled Japanese. Still, the most gratifying reaction has come from Japan, the country where she spent much of her childhood.

“That means a lot to me because I know the feeling of being Japanese and watching Western productions make a Japanese-themed project and being like, ‘It’s not really authentic or accurate,’ or ‘It doesn’t feel real to me,’” she said. “But this one, people see their own culture being reflected in a very accurate way. It’s been amazing.”

Credit for that authenticity goes in no small part to Sanada, who was on set every day, working closely with showrunners Marks and Kondo and the largely Japanese crew, plus the Japanese artists who collaborated with every single department, from stunts to hair and makeup.

“I checked everything — decoration, props, costumes. Fixed them,” he said. He followed the Japanese translation of the script through its elevation into poetic, 17th-century parlance by the Kyoto-based playwright Kiyoko Moriaki. He watched rehearsals and offered actors and directors suggestions before putting on Toranaga’s armor and performing his own scenes. “It does require collaboration and creation,” Sanada said. “It was like a dream.”

For Sanada, the success of “Shōgun” comes at just the right time in Japan, breathing new life into jidaigeki, a type of historical drama that he said has been lagging in recent years. He has signed on to exec produce and resume his role as Toranaga for two more seasons, though a start date for Season 2 production has not yet been announced. Beyond “Shōgun,” he’d be game to work on other historical stories, specifically those about Kabuki and Noh theater. “If the story includes our culture, a historical thing, maybe I want to produce as well. But if not, I want to enjoy acting.” 

He’s open to where that might take place — in Japan, in the U.S. (he’s currently based in Los Angeles), somewhere else — and what the roles would look like. “[I want to do] whatever I’ve never done before,” he said. “Changing the image is also good. [It’s] refreshing for myself, refreshing for the audience.”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post For Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada, the Success of ‘Shōgun’ Is ‘So Surreal’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“In a world that is very chaotic and, frankly, terrifying — some days the news is very bleak — we feel at times in this country powerless,” she said. “To have a show where a problem gets created and then 15 minutes later it’s resolved, it’s pretty comforting. And to have that comfort cloaked in gorgeous, very detailed costumes, Emmy-winning production design and a Broadway bingo [cast of actors], that’s just icing on the cake. Sometimes, you just need entertainment for entertainment’s sake.”

The brainchild of “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes, “The Gilded Age” unfolds like a beautiful, big-budget period soap opera populated with capital-A actors. It delves into the culture clash between old-money New Yorkers like Christine Baranski’s Agnes Van Rhijn and upstarts like their neighbors the Russells, whose patriarch George (Morgan Spector) is a railroad tycoon.

We also get a glimpse into the lives of wealthy Black families like that of Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), who wants to be independent of her parents (Audra McDonald and John Douglas Thompson) to make her way in the world as a journalist.  

For Bertha, her only objective in life is to gain acceptance into high society, and in Season 2, the battle of the rich plays out via dueling opera houses. In the end, Bertha’s new creation, the Metropolitan Opera, prevails over the old society Academy of Music. Playing such a shrewd operator has been fun for Coon. “She’s sort of the bad guy,” she said. “People hate her. It’s glorious to play the character who wins at the end. Who doesn’t like to win? I love to win.” 

Bertha’s determination is bolstered by her strong marriage. So in Season 2, when she and George clash over information he failed to share, we see a different side of Bertha. “I’ve learned how powerful her vulnerability is,” Coon said. “We don’t see it very often; she’s quite tough. She has a break from George and so we see her not having a place to go with her vulnerability and feeling at loose ends. Any villain — if she is in fact a villain; she is a greedy capitalist if nothing else — is certainly more interesting for having that complication.”

A key component to Bertha’s master plan is to marry off her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to a rich suitor, regardless of whether or not he brings love to the union. “She thinks she knows what’s best for her daughter and she thinks her daughter has no idea what she needs,” Coon said. “She certainly thinks her husband doesn’t have any idea what her daughter needs. She doesn’t believe that Gladys is necessarily equal to the task before her, which is making a good match, securing the family fortune and setting up her own children for the future. Bertha’s doing it out of love. It’s just flawed. We do a lot of things for love that are not necessarily good for the people we love.”

So far, Bertha has only rarely crossed paths with the formidable Agnes and her meek sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon). “I would love, love, love to work with Cynthia and Christine,” Coon said. “I never get to work with them and I doubt I will. I just think their worlds are not going to collide.”

We will see, however, the continuing bitter rivalry between Bertha and her former lady’s maid Enid Turner (Kelley Curran), who tried to seduce George in Season 1 and now, married to a tycoon of her own, is on equal social standing as Mrs. Russell. “She’s a tremendous foe; she’s totally unhinged and she has, it seems like, no moral bottom,” Coon said. “I think the thing about Turner that is so terrifying for Bertha is that what she’s accomplished is incredibly impressive. She really was washing my underwear and suddenly she’s being entertained in my house. That is an astonishing leap in any circumstance. Their ambition is very similar.” 

In that case, maybe they won’t remain foes forever? “It might be interesting,” Coon said, “to see what would happen if Bertha and [Enid] teamed up.”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Carrie Coon Loves Playing ‘Sort of the Bad Guy’ on ‘The Gilded Age’ appeared first on TheWrap.

For Debicki, who earned her first Emmy nomination for her Season 5 performance as “the people’s princess,” knowing Diana’s endpoint led to a deliberate decision to subvert viewers’ expectations of what was to come. “I
understood very well where the character was going and I understood what the audience already knows,” the 33-year-old Australian actress said. “We all expect something [to happen], so how do I create something that’s perhaps less expected? And create room for surprise or space for the audience to experience something new?” 

That meant switching her approach.

The knowledge base she established while preparing for Season 5 allowed Debicki the confidence and freedom to take more creative chances in her second go at playing Diana. “I stopped thinking by the time I got to Season 6,” she said. “I trusted myself. I actively let myself discover things, and I was comfortable enough in the skin of the thing that I felt I could push it in different directions and see what worked. You’ve worked hard to lay the foundations for yourself so you can be braver.”

Debicki singled out “all the stuff with the paparazzi” as challenges to film because of what happens next, but it’s a quieter scene creator Peter Morgan wrote — where Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed (played by Khalid Abdalla) attempt to dine at the hotel restaurant hours before their deaths — that proved to be more emotionally taxing.

“The idea of desperately wanting a bit of peace and quiet in a restaurant and not be able to have the luxury of boundaried space and privacy — I remember that being a very, very sad place to be in,” Debicki said.

While Diana’s death casts a long shadow over the first half of Season 6, many of Debicki’s most joyous moments involved scenes with Diana’s young sons, William and Harry (played by Ed McVey and Luther Ford), where she enjoyed her happiest times. It added a liveliness to an otherwise burdened season.

“I’m proud of the scene where it’s me and the two boys, and they’re packing up to leave to go to Balmoral,” Debicki said of an Episode 3 scene that was shot very quickly. “I remember watching that in ADR and I thought, That’s really good. We did a good job. It’s just a lot of love there, you know?” Charting Diana and Dodi’s romance was also a highlight: “These two people landed in a place of grace with one another and there was real love and compassion, real humanity.”  

“The Crown” doesn’t pretend to be an official record of the royal family, though it’s hard not to make comparisons to real life. One of the drama’s most controversial creative liberties came in the form of Diana’s ghost in the fourth
episode. In the scene, Diana has a surprising heart-to-heart with her estranged ex-husband, Prince Charles (Dominic West), on a plane following her death. The “grief scene” is one of Debicki’s favorites, though she was initially apprehensive about how they were going to pull it off. 

“When I found out there was this [controversy] happening around it, I completely understood it because when I read it first in the script, I thought, What is that? How do you do that? What does that mean? Does she look like a person?” she said. “When we came to do that scene, we didn’t rehearse it. We just ran the cameras and it was very honest work. It was a very sad scene to shoot.”

After she took a beat to reflect on her body of work as Diana, Debicki concluded, “I guess I’m proud of a lot of it.”

By the end of filming, though, it was time to let Diana go. “I was ready to leave the part when I felt I finished the story I intended to tell,” she said. “So that was a peaceful thing. I knew I had done my best with that [role].”

“It was very challenging to shoot. Acting is a very physical job and things manifest in ways where it takes time to heal from them. Whether you’re physically tired or your body’s experienced an emotional landscape that’s not its own, that stuff takes time to work its way out of your system. [It] took a long time for me to come back to myself.”

Even so, playing Diana was a rare opportunity, Debicki said — like “lightning in a bottle.”

“I learned a lot, probably more than any other role I’ve ever done,” she said. “I was very, very lucky to play her. I can’t imagine anything will ever come close to it. I feel immensely grateful that I got asked to do this part — it was a big chunk of my life, nearly three years — and an extraordinary thing that came into my life. And I never saw it coming.”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the Drama Series issue here.

The post Elizabeth Debicki Says Portraying Diana’s Final Days on ‘The Crown’ Meant Creating ‘Room for Surprise’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“The Morning Show,” then, would seem a somewhat unlikely arena for the actress to showcase such authenticity. The starry Apple TV+ series is as much a primetime soap as it is prestige viewing: Reese Witherspoon in space! Jennifer Aniston in Italy! Steve Carell … dead! But Beharie, who won Best Actress at the 2021 Gotham Awards for the indie film “Miss Juneteenth” and joined “The Morning Show” in Season 3 as Olympian-turned-news anchor Chris Hunter, said that was part of the appeal. 

“I knew that she was coming to the season with sort of a different energy,” Beharie said. “I spoke to [director] Mimi Leder after my first tape, and she was just so excited about what Chris could introduce to the show, but also what she stood for, in a way. There was no one else like her so far.” In the role, Beharie delivers a forthright, grounded performance that stands in contrast to many of the series’ more over-the-top, soapy performances. (Here’s looking at you, Billy Crudup.) It even stands out from the A-list regular cast as well as fellow Season 3 newcomers Jon Hamm and Tig Notaro.

When Chris is first introduced, she exudes positivity and confidence. “Initially, I was just having a lot of fun,” Beharie said. “She was, you know, teasing Alex [Aniston’s character] about the whole astronaut thing and going to space. And I hadn’t had the opportunity to play such a bright, colorful and sort of warm character in a while. And so I was looking forward to doing that. But then it took a bit of a turn.”

That first “super juicy” turn came in Episode 3, titled “White Noise,” when Chris and network board chairperson Cybil Richards (Holland Taylor) sit down for a live, on-air interview after a data breach reveals that Richards made racist comments about Chris’ hiring, calling her “Aunt Jemima.” In the tense five-and-a-half-minute standoff, Beharie slowly reveals that there is much more to her character than just being the morning show’s upbeat newcomer. Chris asks Cybill to account for her comments, maintaining a perfect calm even when it’s clear she sees through the exec’s platitudes. When Cybil says, “Anyone who sits in that chair should be grateful,” Chris is taken aback. “I sh…” she begins, closing her eyes as if to steady herself. “I should be grateful?” The scene ends with Chris looking right into the camera and saying, “We will move on from institutional racism right after this break.”

“It was a reflection of some things that have actually happened with other journalists and athletes, and I was like, ‘Let’s do it,’” Beharie said. “I just hope that I did it some justice. My trepidation was that it is just such a big show, and I was frightened as a new person. I was nervous about her story getting lost, and I felt like I had a huge responsibility to that. I didn’t want it to just be, like, fodder.” Far from getting lost, the scene became one of the most talked-about of the season. “We’ve gotten some really good feedback,” Beharie said. “It’s why we do it, for those magic moments. And then you hope it works.” 

Asked to tease what’s to come for Chris in Season 4, due later this year, Beharie played off a recent reveal from Leder, who said at an FYC event in Los Angeles, “If the last season was about ‘What is the truth?,’ maybe this season could be about ‘who you trust.’”

“Exploring that this upcoming season is going to be really resonant with the world that we’re living in right now—or in two years,” she said. “What’s insane about what [showrunner Charlotte Stoudt] and Mimi are doing is they have to anticipate what will matter in a year or two’s time. You can’t be behind, or you have to select things that people are not over already. So it’s really quite the task. And they’re doing a magnificent job of figuring out what will stick and what will be uncomfortable and juicy and what might be going on in the world.”

This story first appeared in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post How ‘Morning Show’ Newcomer Nicole Beharie Elevates the Drama and Brings ‘New Energy’ to Season 3 appeared first on TheWrap.

What she wasn’t worried about was appearing in a lackluster retread of the 2005 Doug Liman movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — not with Glover and his “Atlanta” collaborator Sloane running the show. “I had full trust in their point of view that I just knew it was going to be something different,” she said. 

And it is. The eight-episode series, which has been renewed for a second season, weaves drama, action and wry humor to tell a complex story of a marriage in the context of dangerous missions, aliases and cool gadgets. In this telling, two lonely people are thrown together as married spies, fall in love despite themselves and try to keep their relationship intact while outrunning bad guys and explosions.

You’ve talked about how playing a 13-year-old in “Pen15” became comfortable for you because it was like wearing a protective mask. To go from that to playing a woman who’s a strong, skilled spy must have been refreshing, but was it daunting to no longer wear that “awkward teenager mask?”  

Definitely daunting. I had just had a baby. And I was so used to being a-13-year-old that doesn’t have to be quote-unquote pretty in the eyes of the audience. And there was the standard of Angelina Jolie, which is impossible to meet. It helped that they described [our characters] as normal people; it wasn’t the Hollywood glamazon version. But it still crept up on me because it was like, Oh, I have to get in shape. I have to be believably a person that would be able to get into these fights and these missions and be falling in love. I start from that physical transformation. I had to stand proud and tall and be strong and not apologize for my feelings, not apologize for what I was saying. And that’s very different from me. 

You said it was a relief to only have to act in this project, after doing “Pen15,” which I can imagine, especially if you’d just had a baby. Where there times, though, that you missed being the superwoman on set?

The weird thing was, I never felt like that. There were times where I probably wanted to insert myself more than I should have, but the great thing about Fran and Donald was they were so welcoming with me that they treated me like someone who is a writer also. So it wasn’t like, “Maya, be quiet.” They wanted me to collaborate and we would end up rewriting together on set or talking about things, so felt I was an actor who got to have a voice.

But I didn’t have the pressure of having to go off after a full day of filming and rewrite something. That was someone else’s job. It was kind of the perfect thing for me to transition into because I think there are some jobs that you could just come on to set and you might not have any voice really at all.

Jane is a better spy than John, but she downplays her talents, which felt so familiar to me. As women, we’re always apologizing for everything, including success. Did that resonate with you? 

I mean, I grew up apologizing for everything and I still do it. I still do it in my emails to work colleagues. It’s just a constant battle that I’m fighting. I actually felt with Jane that she at least didn’t do that right away. She places such an importance on success because I think that was her way of escaping loneliness. Both Jane and John are incredibly lonely people seeking connection. And that’s complicated, too, because why shouldn’t you be successful and also in a meaningful relationship? But I love that, in the end, she is the one that has to save John. She has to pick up after him.

This is a very physical role. You run so much in this, I started to think you’d replace Tom Cruise as the standard of running on screen. 

It’s funny you say Tom Cruise because, first, I’m not a runner. I smoked for many years, so my lung capacity is that of, you know, nothing. [Laughs] But in that first episode, we’re supposed to run side by side and I definitely was running slower than Donald. So he had to slow his pace. But for me to look faster, they did say, “Raise your arms like Tom Cruise.” And it works!

Jane and John struggle with honesty and communication throughout the series. That is literalized in the couples therapy scenes with Sarah Paulson, because you can’t tell her what your real job is and why it’s affecting your relationship. Was that breakdown of communication fun to play? 

The therapy episode was a really fun one to film. Just the idea of: What could you really say to a therapist? And what is it like when the therapist favors one over the other? Sarah is amazing and she intimidates me, and it felt like [her character] was favoring John the whole time. So I was like, “Wait, do you like me?” [Laughs] My favorite part, though, is actually the last episode, where I get the truth serum and we spill everything. The whole season, I did feel like I was having to hold so much in. And for me, I’m such an over-sharer by nature that it’s so hard to hold in those feelings and emotions. [Laughs] 

The verbal fight that Jane and John have while camping is intense. You both do some really phenomenal acting in that scene. It’s so raw. I don’t wish that fight on anybody.

Yeah, that scene. It kept raining and we had to wait for it to stop raining. We were all in a trailer together deconstructing it because fights are really hard to nail. If you’re watching a real fight, it can be circular and it can be repetitive and things don’t make sense sometimes and they come back around and what’s the really dark thing that someone says that sets it off and turns it into a whole other fight? And so we were playing around with that a lot and sort of rewriting it all together. And finally, we just finally decided to film it.

It was satisfying to film but also really intense because Donald, when he was fighting with me as John, there were moments that I felt like he won in a way that I couldn’t. I had nothing else to say. I felt really stunned and shut up by him. It was really hard to not feel like it was personal because it felt so personnel. I think we’ve all been in certain fights that felt reminiscent of it. And so it just felt really hurtful. So having to get out of that and be like, “Alright, okay, we’re friends, it’s fine” — yeah, that was a hard one to shoot.

You mentioned how Jane has to save John. This happens in the finale, which ends on a cliffhanger where you don’t know if the Smiths are alive or dead. 

Yes. And it’s how Fran has described it: It shows what kind of a person you are, glass half-full or glass half-empty, if you think that they survived or not.

Well, I’m such a hopeless romantic that I’m like, they have to live! 

Me too. 

So…can I hope that you return for Season 2? 

You can hope! When they first approached me, I did think it was just a one-off or if not that, then each season would be a different “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” When they’ve been talking about their plans for what a second season would be, it’s very exciting because I really like where they’re going with it. I don’t want to give anything away and I absolutely will. [Laughs] All I will say is I’m excited about where the story goes. Doesn’t mean I’m involved or not. 

A version of this story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Maya Erskine Talks Fight Scenes, Couples Therapy and Not Taking It Personally on ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“This resonates with people on a spiritual level,” she said. “I’ve had some amazing encounters with fans.”

Being a citizen of the “Star Wars” universe comes with a heavy responsibility to hold up the legacy of one of the most famous franchises of all time, fans of which have been known to get vicious when they don’t like something. A protégée of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka is a beloved character who first appeared in the 2008 animated feature “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and was voiced by Ashley Eckstein. Introducing a live-action version of such an integral character—it’s through her that we watch Anakin move to the Dark Side in “Star Wars: Rebels”—was a gamble. But when she appeared in the second season of “The Mandalorian” in 2020, the reception was so positive that a month later, Lucasfilm announced that Ahsoka would be getting a spin-off series. In late summer 2023, “Ahsoka” began streaming on Disney+ to positive reviews. 

Being cast as Ahsoka just felt right to Dawson, who has long been a fangirl of the far-away galaxy George Lucas created a long time ago. “I think I was probably the person who knew every music cue and all the things,” she said. She didn’t feel pressure, necessarily, and embraced every minute of the animated content that formed Ahsoka’s backstory. All that, she said, “lives in my head rent-free.” Dawson knew so well the stories of the brash young Jedi—nicknamed “Snips” by Anakin—who grows into a morally conflicted master that by the time she stepped on set, she felt like she had lived them herself. “They’re like memories at this point,” she said.

Ahsoka’s appearances in “The Mandalorian” and another spin-off, “The Book of Boba Fett,” helped Dawson situate the character: She was still driven by an obsessive desire to find one of the galaxy’s big bads (the vile, blue-skinned Grand Admiral Thrawn, voiced in the animated series and played in “Ahsoka” by Lars Mikkelsen), but also enough at peace to be able to train young Grogu (a.k.a. Baby Yoda) to become a Jedi. 

“It was nice grappling with where she’s at in her life now and coming to terms with just how much she’s gone through,” Dawson said. A member of the Togruta species known for their spindly head tails, Ahsoka has weathered an almost constant chain of loss, from Order 66, which led to the galaxy-wide extermination of the Jedi, to the death of her key ally, Ezra (played by Eman Esfandi in “Ahsoka”).

“I marvel at her journey,” Dawson said. “She’s got one of the most epic arcs of any character in history, let alone in ‘Star Wars.’ She’s been exposed to so much war and at a transitional time when the Jedi are not just peacekeepers, they’re full-on militants. [She’s been] confronted with a lot of decisions at such a young age. There are things that have haunted her for a long time … especially the people she loves, and the transition she made from people who she thought were like family and finding exactly what her path is.” One of those people is Anakin Skywalker, who returned in “Ahsoka,” once again played by Hayden Christensen.

Dawson describes Ahsoka as a “ronin,” a samurai without a master: “She’s a person who is following the missions as they appear.” To get into character, Dawson said she channeled Bruce Lee. “I kept imagining real-life people because you’re in this world of these characters who are mystical in their abilities, but you want to ground it in some sort of reality,” she said.

If she was unsure about anything, she knew she could turn to showrunner Dave Filoni, who created the original animated Ahsoka Tano and wrote every episode of the live-action series. “What was so nice was that it’s not just history. He shared the emotional landscape,” Dawson said. Filoni initially created “Ahsoka” under the guidance and leadership of George Lucas, and he shared what they talked about concerning the character. “It felt really powerful to be able to be part of new storytelling and build on that history,” the actress said. 

She’s likely to keep building. A second season of “Ahsoka” has been teased, with filming reportedly beginning soon in London. The experience has been a whirlwind, but Dawson is ready for more. “It still feels like magic,” she said.

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post ‘Ahsoka’ Star Rosario Dawson Knows Her Jedi So Well That Her Backstory Began Feeling Like Real Memories appeared first on TheWrap.

And “Lost” became much more than a ratings hit. It was a phenomenon that influenced the next generation of television storytelling and helped give rise to the rabid fan groups (commonplace now) that came together in online forums to obsess over every last plot detail, hang on every single clue and eventually gripe about all the red herrings. 

With its innovative, serialized model of storytelling, “Lost” was a breath of fresh air in a landscape dominated by the likes of “CSI,” “American Idol” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Each week — remember, we were still eight years away from Netflix’s first original series, “Lilyhammer,” kicking off a streaming revolution — we reliably showed up, on time, to learn what was happening on the unnamed, uncharted tropical island on which the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 were stranded.

There, they reckoned with unfriendly polar bears, a transceiver playing a recorded cry for help in French on a 15-year continuous loop and a terrifying, amorphous being that fans dubbed the Smoke Monster. Each episode toggled between the island narrative, flashbacks to the characters’ pre-crash lives and even flash-forwards — all pieces to what became a tantalizing, ever-expanding narrative puzzle. 

As engineered by showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (plus executive producer and pilot director J.J. Abrams), “Lost” was groundbreaking in its high production value. The pilot itself reportedly cost more than $13 million. Narratively, it juggled more than a dozen major characters who all became an integral part of our lives. They entered and exited, storylines commenced and often abruptly concluded (Nikki and Paulo, good riddance). Throughout, “Lost” engaged with and upended archetypes (the scoundrel with a heart of gold, the mysterious stranger) that would almost certainly have been played straight everywhere else on network television back then. 

“Lost” wasn’t just a show we watched, it was an interactive experience we shared, as we dreamed up and debated theories, wrapped ourselves in the island’s interlocking mysteries and tried to uncover its myriad secrets. Its storyline and narrative foundation carried a rare blend of philosophical, sociological and theological heft, zeroing in on mediations on life, death, birth and rebirth.

Over its six-season run, “Lost” regularly topped critics’ lists, won Emmys and was imitated by dozens of short-lived shows that unsuccessfully tried to evoke its addictive serialized structure, moody tone and sophisticated aesthetic. Its Emmy success, though, was front-loaded: It won the Outstanding Drama Series award for its first season, but became one of the few shows to score a Season 1 victory and never again win. Overall, six of the total 10 Emmys it would win came for that first season, with no subsequent season winning more than one.

By the time the polarizing two-part finale aired in May 2010, some of the show’s initial glow had dimmed: Ratings had dipped into the (still respectable) 11-million range and some critics contended that it had become an unwieldy mess. As the last moments of the last episode unfolded, some of the many big questions the show posed had finally been answered (so that’s how the Smoke Monster came to be!), but others (Why were Hurley’s numbers cursed?) remained frustratingly out of reach. They still are.

But maybe, with “Lost” now available to binge at any time on Disney+ and Hulu, those lingering enigmas are our invitation to return to the island. Maybe, we’ll think about Walt or Ben or Juliet or Jin and Sun and find ourselves saying, like Matthew Fox’s reluctant hero, Jack, “We have to go back.” 

This story first appeared in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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An adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 novel that was previously made into a 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain, “Shōgun” is the story of rival warlords whose games of political chess are upended by the arrival of John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), a British pirate the locals dub “Anjin” (pilot). Since many of the characters are inspired by real figures well known to Japanese people — including Hiroyuki Sanada’s Lord Toranaga — Rosario also pored over historical documents and museum pieces.

“We started learning from them and studying their armors,” he said. “And then, slowly, it was really about understanding the language of the clothing of that period — understanding the different ranks, the subtleties.”

For instance, noblewomen indicated their status by the number of layers they wore. And since cotton was rare at the time, Rosario only used it to make tabi (traditional socks) for the all-powerful taikō and his family. “We [wanted to] be as accurate as possible to respect the Japanese culture and to help the audience immerse themselves into this world,” Rosario said. 

To tackle the logistics of a show that features more than a dozen major characters and hundreds of extras, all of different ranks and all depicted in a variety of locations and circumstances that call for specific garb, Rosario began by organizing everyone into groups and giving them a color palette and textile: earthy indigo and gray hemp for the villagers in Ajiro, more colorful patterned silks and linens for the citizens of Osaka and sumptuous silk brocades in rich metallics, burgundies, reds and blues for the nobles inside Osaka castle.

When it came time to produce the clothing, Rosario sourced all textiles (down to the tassels and cording) directly from Japan. He and his team also rented several pieces of traditional Japanese clothing so they could study how the garments were constructed and reproduce them properly. Many items required embroidery, appliqués and weaving that, done by hand, took weeks to finish.

In the end, the 125-person costume department produced thousands of garments lovingly covered in meaningful details: warlords’ jinbaoris in textured leather reminiscent of tree bark; a green dragon etched into the armor of backstabbing Lord Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano); Lady Ochiba’s (Fumi Nikaidô) five layers of clothing compared to Lady Mariko’s (Anna Sawai) four. If these details go unnoticed by casual viewers, Rosario doesn’t mind.

“When you do your best for everything, it builds up an energy around you where people are passionate and motivated,” he said. “It’s contagious. Everybody on set and in the other departments were suddenly realizing we’re doing something very special. So even though sometimes you don’t see it, you can feel it. It’s there.”

Here, a closer look at three main characters’ costumes.  

Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada)

The Japanese superstar who also produced “Shōgun” plays the brilliant strategist several steps ahead of his enemies. Rosario dressed him in luxurious silks of chocolate brown, copper, burgundy and gold to showcase his wealth and power. One of Rosario’s favorite pieces is the peacock feather-embellished jinbaori, or vest, that Toranaga wears over his armor during a decisive battle. Rosario’s team first made a version for the young Toranaga (Kai Coulter) seen in Episode 8, hand-stitching dozens of peacock feathers to the vest. “It really is the beginning of the story of Toranaga and the end,” Rosario said. 

Lady Mariko (Anna Sawai)

More than any other character, Lady Mariko’s wardrobe reflects her story arc. Unhappily married and wishing only to commit seppuku (suicide) to join her deceased family, she appears in icy white coats called uchikakes and kosodes (the precursor to the kimono) covered with leafless branches in the beginning.

But as she finds her inner strength and grows close to Blackthorne as his translator, lifeless trees give way to blooming camellias. “Slowly she’s opening herself to this new path. Slowly, more colors, more patterns come,” Rosario said. Later in the series, Mariko also wears a spectacular gold patchwork uchikake made from leftover fabric. “I love that one because all the fabrics that we found were so expensive and so beautiful, so I didn’t want to lose any scrap,” Rosario said. 

Kashigi Yabushige (Tadanobu Asano)

The slippery lord (played by Tadanobu Asano) whose allegiance tends to go whichever way the winds of power are blowing breaks a lot of rules, according to Rosario: “He’s this very complex, interesting character that you never know where he’s at. And so I felt like if somebody is like that, he would dress in a very different way than everybody else, maybe in a less classic way. I wanted to do something for him that was a bit more showy.”

That included the black feathers meant to evoke a raven. “I wanted an organic natural element from nature to be part of his clothing,” Rosario said. “But also, he was sort of like a rock-and-roll star, so that jinbaori design feels to me like a big fur coat.”

John Blackthorne/Anjin (Cosmo Jarvis)

When the British pirate’s ship washes up on the shores of Izu, local forces replace his European britches and shirt with a simple kosode, stripping him of his identity (and presumed superiority). He finds the clothing restrictive and uncomfortable, which only emphasizes his foreignness. “It was very important to keep all the colors muted, very simple because even though he’s one of the lead characters, he’s very powerless in that world. I wanted to create a contrast between him and everybody else,” Rosario said.

As Blackthorne integrates into Japanese culture and improves his standing in Toranaga’s clan, his wardrobe becomes more refined. In Episode 8, he wears a very formal green kataginu (samurai’s vest) with gold stripes that are a nod to a costume worn by the last person who played Anjin. “I told [showrunner] Justin Marks, ‘We have to do this one because it’s an homage to Richard Chamberlain.’”

This story first ran in the Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.Read more from the issue here.

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The 45 entries contain films about Paul Simon, James Brown, the Beach Boys, U2, Jennifer Lopez, Lil Nas X and even the disgraced Milli Vanilli, among others. There’s a film about the recording of a single song, one about a concert at Hoover Dam and one in the aftermath of the murder of a singing star. (True crime meets music, you could say.)

Of the documentaries that qualified in the category, 12 are music related, a 27% share that is almost four times the proportion of music films in the 2023 Oscar-qualifying documentaries.

As voting goes on in the Emmys’ nomination round, here’s a guide to the music docs that are in the running.

“The Beach Boys” (Disney+)
Directors: Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny

Veteran producer Marshall has directed a string of music docs in recent years, including “Carole King & James Taylor: Just Call Out My Name,” “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story” and “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” He joins forces with longtime music-doc director Zimny (“Springsteen on Broadway,” “Willie Nelson & Family,” “Elvis Presley: The Searcher”) for this look at the long-running Southern California band, which focuses far more on the first 15 years of the band’s career than the 50 or so years since then. The center of the film is tortured mastermind Brian Wilson, who is not in shape to talk through the career – so the film relies on archival interviews and footage of Wilson and his late brothers, and new interviews with bandmates like Al Jardine and Mike Love, who comes across as more measured and less embittered than he has sometimes seemed.

“Billy Idol: State Line” (Veeps)
Directors: Vincent Adam Paul and George Scott

This 93-minute doc is billed as showcasing “the first-ever live concert in front of the world famous Hoover Dam,” which may be a rather arcane first except for those who are big fans of “White Wedding” and “Eyes Without a Face.” The film, which received a brief theatrical release in late 2023, sets up the unusual event but focuses on footage of the show at which the veteran punk and new-wave musician was joined by his longtime guitarist Steve Stevens and by special guests Alison Mosshart, Steve Jones and Tony Kanal.

“The Greatest Love Story Never Told” (Prime Video)
Director: Jason B. Bergh

J-Lo is double dipping at the Emmys this year, with her special “Apple Music Live: Jennifer Lopez” competing against concerts by Lady Gaga, Audra McDonald, Barry Manilow, Billy Joel, Hozier and Maren Morris and others in the Outstanding Variety Special (Pre-Recorded) category. This documentary about the making of her “This Is Me … Now” album, is part of the multimedia barrage that accompanied that album and also included the Apple Music concert and a musical film on Amazon featuring Post Malone, Keke Palmer and others. Jane Fonda is part of this film, and so is Ben Affleck.

“The Greatest Night in Pop” (Netflix)
Director: Bao Nguyen

In an all-night recording session in January 1985, almost 50 pop and rock stars recorded a single called “We Are the World,” a Lionel Richie/Michael Jackson song written to raise money for relief efforts in Africa. “Be Water” director Bao Nguyen was too young to remember when the song was released, and he wasn’t really a fan of sentimental composition (“quite corny,” he says), but he found the rush to get it written and recorded to be “like a cliffhanger. It felt like a ticking-time-bomb sort of story.” Participants including Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis and Sheila E. participated in the doc.  

“In Restless Dreams:  The Music of Paul Simon” (MGM+)
Director: Alex Gibney

“In Restless Dreams” is the first film about an entertainer that Oscar-winning director Gibney has made since his two-part Frank Sinatra miniseries “Sinatra: All or Nothing at All” in 2015. The two-part, three-and-a-half-hour film is an intimate look at the recording of Simon’s last album, “Seven Psalms,” using that meditative album as a jumping-off point for an examination of Simon’s entire career. TheWrap’s review said, “’In Restless Dreams’ captures an important artist at a crucial time in his life, and finds a way to do so with humor, pathos and a sense of wonder.”

“James Brown: Say It Loud” (A&E)
Director: Deborah Riley Draper

Draper’s previous work included the film “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice” and doc series “The Legacy of Black Wall Street,” both of which focused on the reverberations of specific events. This four-part documentary is about a single person, the titanic singer and performer James Brown, but his life and career also reverberated throughout popular culture and helped change society and art. She told TheWrap that she approached the film fascinated by a question she saw on the cover of a 1960s issue of Look magazine: “Is James Brown the most important Black man in America?”

“Kiss the Future”
Director: Nenad Cicin-Sain

The talking heads in this film set during the Bosnian war in the 1990s include Bill Clinton and Christiane Amanpour, but the focus is on a group of people who refused to let the siege of Sarajevo stop their defiant art and music, and on the massive rock group, U2, who shined a spotlight on that siege during the concerts on their huge ZooTV tour. TheWrap’s review of the film after its 2023 premiere at the Berlin Film Festival called it “a portrait of a city and a people who used culture to fight back; it’s also the story of a rock ‘n’ roll band exploring the limits of how its music can impact the real world. Above all else, though, it’s a rich and moving chronicle of the use of art as both a weapon and a means to salvation.”

“Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero” (HBO)
Directors: Carlos Lopez Estrada and Zan Manuel

As as openly queer Black artist, rapper and singer Lil Nas X has been a trailblazer but also faced a homophobic backlash, possibly including a bomb threat that delayed the Toronto Film Festival premiere of this film. “Long Live Montero” is a chronicle of Lil Nas X’s first tour that takes the form of a diary and delves into his relationship with his audience and his family.

“Milli Vanilli” (Paramount+)
Director: Luke Korem

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the German pop group Milli Vanilli went from hitmaking artists to a pop-culture punchline with lightning speed when it was revealed that they lip-synced on stage and didn’t sing on their records. Members Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus could never recover from the humiliation, with a couple of failed comeback attempts preceding Pilatus’ suicide in 1998. But filmmaker Luke Korem, who said what really happened “is more bizarre than anyone knows,” lets Morvan tell the story in this documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023.  

“The Secret Song” (PBS)
Director: Samantha Campbell

This film isn’t about a specific artist; instead, it’s about a teacher, Doug Goodkin, who taught music to children for 45 years in San Francisco. The documentary follows Goodkin during his final year as a teacher – a year that turned out to bring the COVID-19 pandemic, which closed schools and forced Goodkin to find new ways to create community through music.

“Selena & Yolanda: The Secrets Between Them” (Oxygen)
Director: Billie Mintz

The story of Tejano star Selena Quintanilla Pérez and her murder at the hands of her fan-club president Yolanda Saldívar has been told in the 1997 movie “Selena,” the 2018 series “Selena’s Secret” and the 2021 Netflix series “Selena: The Series,” among other places. This new two-part doc series tells the story from inside the Texas prison where Saldívar is serving a life sentence, with the convicted killer giving her first English-language interview in decades from behind bars.   

“Wham!”  (Netflix)
Director: Chris Smith

This 93-minute film is a zippy travelogue through the relatively brief career of the hit duo of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley that doesn’t expend much time on the lives that came before (they get together and make their first record by the six-minute mark of the film) or any time on Michael’s solo career that came after. The extensive concert footage can be amusing (those short-shorts!), but the film can be surprisingly touching with the help of some archival interviews in which Michael speaks openly about his struggles as he remained in the closet for his entire Wham! career, only coming out as gay a decade into his solo career.

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