The idea for “Queens” was borne out of a conversation Berlowitz had with NatGeo executive Janet Van Hissering, who suggested they explore females in the natural world as a full-fledged series. After discovering there hadn’t been a show that explored the matriarchal side of things (“Surprise, surprise,” Berlowitz said), it was full steam ahead.

“We thought, obviously, the time was right,” she said. The first task was to put together a “brilliant” female production team.

Enter Sarosh, who was on maternity leave when she got the call from Berlowitz. The “Queens” showrunner admitted she was reticent to come aboard due to her status as a new mother. “‘This is exactly why you’re going to do it,'” Sarosh recalled Berlowitz telling her.

“We literally had to rip up the rule book and find a completely different way to make a series like this,” she said. “This is revolutionary to make this series and it wasn’t always easy. But it was a hugely satisfying thing to do—in the office, on location, in post-production. Just phenomenal women and incredible men that supported us because there actually aren’t enough women to make a series like this. But hopefully, we are the first in a real change and we’ll leave a legacy.”

There’s a bit of history being made with “Queens” behind the camera. Musembi is the first Black Kenyan woman to direct and produce episodes of a major landmark series.

“It means everything,” Musembi said of her groundbreaking achievement. “When we talk about natural history, wildlife series or films, most of them are filmed in Africa. But the irony, up until a few years ago, is a lot of the people who make the series aren’t Africans. It blows your mind a little bit—like, why is that?

“When something’s made that way, it excludes the people who are living with the animals, the actual stakeholders. So to include black and brown voices in this, it has to happen. It’s the way forward and the world of the natural world needs it to happen.”

During the discussion, Darlington, who was responsible for framing the visuals on “Queens” as director of photography, also spoke about the lack of women in key roles such as cinematography and camera work. Kibby, who worked on the series’ arresting music score, praised Sarosh’s openness to be creative and different.

Because “Queens” is a docuseries about animals, which often has a very specific audience, it was vital that the creative team make it as accessible as possible. “We wanted it to be relatable,” Sarosh explained.

She added, “These are phenomenal, female, powerful stories and then they evolve and sometimes the characters inspire you to write. Other times you’re trying to weave (in) science in a way that feels entertaining and exciting. But we have always been unapologetically dramatic about these stories because they are. It’s not straight natural history, it’s a blended drama. It’s been incredibly fun and creatively freeing to do.”

Typical action sequences like big fights, big hunts and the flowing manes often seen in nature docs aren’t prevalent here. “It was a big risk for us to purposely turn away from the things that natural history usually does,” Sarosh said.

And also issues of consent. “It’s fundamental to a lot of the societies that we followed,” she noted. “But these queens are not all benevolent across the series. You will see some real characters and some pretty hardcore behavior as well. There are all types of female leader.” Berlowitz singled out the “badass, gangsta granny orca” as one of those characters on “Queens.”

As for the biggest challenge the team faced? It had nothing to do with being out in the field.

“It was the weight on our shoulders,” Sarosh said. “When we would got out about ‘Queens,’ there was very much a sense of, ‘Oh, that series the girls are making.’ But in that moment, we realized the weight of the fact that not only did we have to make something good, we had to make something great because everyone was waiting for us to fail across the board.”

“We’ve carried that weight for four years. We cannot tell you what a privilege it is to to see people’s reactions to these films,” she continued. “It may not be for everyone. We’ve all heaved that collective sigh when we realized it is good and people are enjoying it. Thank goodness because it was a risk, a huge risk.”

Berlowitz said they’d “like to” explore more matriarchal societies because there are “plenty more stories where these came from.”

“What’s really exciting is scientists are revising their thoughts,” she said. “They’re looking at classic patriarchal societies and going, ‘Maybe the females do have more power than we realize. We just haven’t been looking in the right way.'”

Watch the full discussion here.

The post How NatGeo’s ‘Queens’ Had to ‘Literally Rip Up the Rule Book’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Kemp Powers, one of the directors of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse;” Nick Bruno, one of the directors of “Nimona;” Peter Sohn, the director of “Elemental;” Pablo Berger, director of “Robot Dreams;” and Toshio Suzuki, producer of “The Boy and the Heron” (and co-founder of Studio Ghibli) all spoke about the process of getting their films made – and the surprises along the way.

“So much of it has been getting to know the other filmmakers on this back end of the life of a film and it just feels like a privilege and an honor. And it’s also bittersweet. This is the end days of the journey of a film,” said Sohn about what it meant to get nominated. “And as lucky as I feel, I’m already holding tight to the hand of the film like, Oh, I’m going to miss you.”

Powers even gave a shout-out to some of the other terrific movies that weren’t nominated but were really, really special: “I love all of these films. I’m a huge fan. And there’s actually several other films that weren’t nominated that I love just as much. I love ‘Suzume’ so much, I love ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.’ There were so many great films that came out this year.”

Powers, who also co-directed the Oscar-winning “Soul,” also said, “I found myself emotionally connected to and moved and honestly dazzled by the array of different styles in the animated films. I love that none of our films look like one another at all. It’s so cool.”

Berger, who had made three live-action films before pivoting to animation with the charming, heartbreaking “Robot Dreams,” said that he met Guillermo del Toro at Annecy last year and that now he’s totally hooked. “Once you try it, you cannot take it away. I’m with you guys. I’m one of us,” Berger said. “I want to keep making animated films. It really opened my mind.”

You can watch the full Q&A with the nominees here.

The post TheWrap Screening Series: Best Animated Feature Nominees on Being ‘Dazzled by the Array of Different Styles’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

They included sibling pop duo Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, previous Original Song winners and authors of the “Barbie” smash “What Was I Made For?”, Honorary Oscar recipient and legendary songwriter Diane Warren for her song “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot,” and composers Scott George (nominated for his triumphant conclusion song “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon), five-time Emmy winner Laura Karpman for her stirring score for “American Fiction,” and newcomer Jerskin Fendrix for his inventive compositions for “Poor Things.” The latter three are enjoying their first-ever Academy Award nominations.

As a 15-time Oscar nominee, Warren kicked off by remembering her love of movie music, particularly the title song from 1966’s “Born Free,” also an Oscar winner. “It just gutted me,” said Warren. “And there was “To Sir With Love” and “A Hard Day’s Night, and I was touched deeply as a viewer and listener. So I took a bunch of film classes, so I could just watch movies. I’d sit in the back working on my songs. And I think that by osmosis, that combination, kind of trained me in a weird way.”

Next up were Eilish and O’Connell, no strangers to the Oscars stage for their Academy-recognized Bond tune “No Time to Die” just three years ago. The former mentioned animated films such as “Over the Hedge” and “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” as influences when she was young (remember, she’s only 22), and how she loved Thomas Newman’s “American Beauty” score. “I had the whole soundtrack downloaded before I ever saw it, ” said Eilish, “and I know that like the back of my hand and I think it’s so beautiful.”

O’Connell was very much in love with Howard Shore’s “The Lord of the Rings” scores and the Trent Reznor-Atticus Ross scores for films like “The Social Network” and “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” “They were super important and evocative to me and as I got a little older and started to like dabble in trying to record and make music, like seeing “The Social Network with that score was very inspiring from a kind of a standpoint of ‘like, ‘oh my God, that’s sort of the world that I like, that’s the music that I’m trying to make.”

George is brand-new to the film scene, and hails from the same Osage area that “Killers” is set in, as a longtime drummer and Native performer with various tribes and local companies. “Normally, using our music in film is sometimes out of context, you know, a score might be written or something, and they’re trying to capture some of the melodies and things like that in the score,” said George. “This is probably the first time I’ve seen it where it’s used to actually try to move the audience from one part of the movie.”

Karpman has won several Emmys for her TV compositions, especially for documentaries, and was best known as a Juilliard-trained jazz musician from her early days. “I really wanted to be a New York intellectual composer,” said Karpman, “And, you know, teach and do that kind of thing. But I got really turned on by this idea of how much music could move drama forward. And then when I wound up at Sundance, I saw that work together for the first time and then I was really committed to trying to see if I can make a life of this which I have.”

Fendrix is a British musician known for electro-pop style music with a Nick Cave-like singing style, and found himself drawn to music in TV shows such as “The Simpsons” and “Futurama,” which do not adhere to emotional rungs, and loves 1990s Disney films for their musical complexity. I really stuff like “Mulan” and “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” I think that’s extraordinarily high-level stuff, said Fendrix. “Like in “Mulan,” the balance between these kind of really jokey, New York cabaret kind of songs when it suddenly comes to this kind of really intense Shakuhachi kind of music. I’ve always been really drawn to those sorts of contrasts and how you express emotion musically, rather than just any one uncomplicated direction.”

You can watch the full conversation Q&A with the nominees here.

The post TheWrap Screening Series: Billie Eilish and Finneas Fell in Love With Movie Music Through ‘Social Network’ and ‘American Beauty’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

One of the topics of discussion was the challenges the filmmakers faced while making their docs. In the case of “The ABCs of Book Banning,” about the ongoing campaign by arch-conservatives to ban books in public schools and libraries, Adlesic said, “We’re getting all kinds of threats, like we’re pedophiles. We’re getting death threats for making the film because we’re standing against this injustice. I wish that the people banning books were as sophisticated and mature as the children in the film that you see.”

She added, “Grace is such a model of inspiration for so many of us. At 101, if she can stand up and say, ‘This is not acceptable’ and [show] what book banning can lead to for all of us, how could we not take the challenge and not take the risk of people, you know, attacking us and doing things to us?”

For “Island in Between” director S. Leo Chiang and producer Jean Tsien, one of the biggest challenges was finding an emotional entry point for viewers who might not be familiar with the islands of Kinmen, which are located between mainland China and Taiwan and are governed by Taiwan. Their solution was to lean into Chiang’s own personal history: He was born and raised in Taiwan, went to the U.S. as a teenager and later returned to his home country.

“In some ways, this film was a little bit of an existential crisis film for me,” Chiang said. “I’ve actually felt very distant from Taiwan for a long time, you know, sort of hearing stories from far away. But because the last few years, I’ve been back in Taiwan, it really kind of challenged my identity of me being Taiwanese.

“I think that maybe that’s one of the reasons why the film connected with audiences outside of the region,” he continued. “Because, really, it’s about a sense of belonging, the definition of home, which I think all of us can relate to. Doesn’t matter where we’re from and what language you speak.”

Here, he turned to fellow panelist Sean Wang, the director of “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó” who is Taiwanese-American. Explaining that the nominations for his and Wang’s films have caused a stir in Taiwan, he said, “I actually want to shout out to Sean. The Taiwanese people are so thrilled. You cannot imagine the media madness that is happening now.”

Wang couldn’t have asked for a happier ending to his doc, which celebrates his two nonagenarian grandmothers and was born out of the rise in hate crimes against Asians during the pandemic. “It was that feeling of just wanting to remember them, honor them, help people who were only really seeing … elderly people in our communities as victims, [as] headlines of the anti-Asian hate crimes,” he said, adding that he wanted to “capture my grandmothers’ spirits in a way that was joyful and silly and infectious and youthful, but without ignoring the pain, the loneliness and the mortality that comes with old age as well.”

The filmmakers behind “The Last Repair Shop” and “The Barber of Little Rock” were similarly inspired by unsung heroes. “Repair Shop” tells the story of the craftspeople who restore the musical instruments provided to students in the Los Angeles public school system, and as Kris Bowers, who co-directed with Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot, noted, “Oftentimes [there are] incredible artists or stars that come out of a city, but we never know about the village that really made them possible. And so, I think for us, it was really about turning a spotlight on these people that work literally in the shadows.”

“The Barber of Little Rock,” meanwhile, focuses on Arlo Washington, who founded a nonprofit community bank in Arkansas to help close the racial wealth gap. Christine Turner, the film’s co-director with John Hoffman, recalled how she first heard of Washington. She remembered being told of the unique headquarters of his community development financial institution (CFDI): “‘There’s this guy named Arlo who has, in the parking lot of his barber college, a converted shipping container with a loan fund and you’ve got to meet him,'” Turner said. “And of course, sure enough, we did. And we knew right then and there, we had our subject.”

Later, she added, “He’s really a pillar in the community. And he’s a mentor to so many. So he gives anybody who comes up to him the time of day and he speaks with everyone and he listens to everyone. We were surprised by that. But that’s also why we were so drawn to what he’s doing.”

Washington, who was also on the panel, added that the film has “increased the demand for our products and services, how we help people. We’ve had more national attention. The CDFI industry is made up of about 1,500 CDFIs nationwide. And so the industry has really been intrigued with the fact that our film has gotten nominated for an Oscar,” he said.

“When I go in a grocery store now, it’s kind of like, ‘Hey! I saw you in a documentary!'” he said, laughing. “But we never did it for TV, we do it because we emerged out of unmet credit need, and it was what our community needed. And so I’ve always been solutions-driven. That’s why we put the shipping container on a parking lot because we just needed a place to make access to capital happen.”

You can watch the full conversation with the nominees here.

The post TheWrap Screening Series: Filmmakers Behind Oscar-Nominated Doc Shorts Praise Unsung Heroes | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

The film is inspired by a creation myth that posits that humans are but one small part of the natural world. “In this story, humans are not the crown of creation, they are just one of the created beings,” Gauder said during a recent discussion with Steve Pond and “Four Souls of Coyote” producer Réka Temple that was part of TheWrap’s Screening Series.

In richly colored animation, “Four Souls of Coyote” shows Native American protesters confronting the crew of an oil pipeline project that is being built near their ancestral land. From there, the story folds back into the ancient tale of the creation the universe. The message is simple: We must respect and protect the planet.

Gauder got the idea to bookend his movie with a protest set in the present day from the 2016-17 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which would run through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on the border of North and South Dakota. “While we were working on a script, Standing Rock happened,” he said. “And I thought that this is not, you know, like an ancient story which has nothing to do with how we live now. But this still happening and what these people are protecting, there is water against oil, and they have a message we all have to understand. So that was a really big motivation to make this story.”

Temple, who described herself as a “hands-on producer,” said the process of making “Four Souls of Coyote” during Covid brought the film’s creative team closer together, despite the physical distance. “It was a special experience because everyone was locked down and we were connected via internet and via online Zoom meetings. And we really felt the connection,” she said. Temple estimated that the team was made up of approximately 150 people from Hungary, Italy, Germany and other parts of Europe. “We had 150 people — animators, artists — working on the film, starting from pre-production: character designing, background painting, coloring, animating.” It made for an intense collaboration. “We had a lot of emotions … and I think it really [is reflected] on what we see on screen.”

As Pond pointed out, Gauder’s feature isn’t the only film this year to engage with the idea of coyotes. In a key scene in “Flowers of the Killer Moon,” Lily Gladstone‘s character calls her future husband (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) a coyote — echoing the symbolism of the coyote as a trickster in Osage folklore.

In Gauder’s film, the animal’s role is slightly different. “I think coyote represents our subconscious mind or desire or bad side,” he said. “[It’s] the side we all have in us, but we don’t want to acknowledge or we want to push it down. But it’s there.” In his movie, the coyote stands in contrast to the character of the grandfather, who evokes the creation myth. “The old man is the other side, the aware, sober part of us and what we more relate to, but sometimes our motivations are coming from the coyote, which is living inside [us].”

Watch the full conversation with the “Four Souls of Coyote” filmmakers here.

The post How ‘Four Souls of Coyote’ Used Standing Rock Protests to Tell an Ancient Native American Tale appeared first on TheWrap.

First on deck was director Thijs Bouman, whose 19-minute short “De Pinpas (The Debit Card)” chronicles a Polish au pair feeling entrusted with the debit card PIN code provided by the family who employs her. “Me and my screenwriter read an article which stated that there were a lot of Eastern European au pairs who have to do a lot of chores in the daily life in their work,” Bouman said. “They are being kept from their family, didn’t get to see their own family and getting paid really badly. We needed to get into the system and get into the lives of parents who leave their own children to take care of other people’s children.”

“Madeleine” director Raquel Sancinetti presented a heartfelt, partly animated 15-minute fantasia about aging, in which a 107-year-old attempts a trip to the sea with her much younger friend 67 years her junior. “I started this project five years ago,” said Sancinetti, who bonded with a homebound older woman she met through an aquatic fitness class named Madeleine. “After the class, I went to meet Madeleine at her home, and it was love at first sight, we connected and bonded right away. I visited her for five years, every week, once or twice a week. And I knew that she wouldn’t leave the house. The only way I could [tell this story] was through the animation.”

“Neighbour Abdi,” a short by Douwe Dijkstra, is a bold, 29-minute exploration of a Somalian furniture designer re-enacting his life (complete with horrific war imagery) via green screens and visual effects with the help of filmmaker Dijkstra, his neighbor. “The project started in this space where I’m sitting now,” Dijkstra said. “Once he learned that I was a filmmaker he kept saying, ‘You should make a film about my life!’ Tha was his very clear request. And when I got to know him a bit better, I thought it was actually a really, really good idea because there was an amazing story standing on my doorstep.”

Last up was John Hoffman and Christine Turner’s “The Barber of Little Rock,” a sobering look at the effects of societal racism and scraping by, as seen through the eyes of subject Arlo Washington, a Black barber who becomes an Arkansas hero when he creates a landmark, singular community bank that actually transforms the lives of his town’s residents.

“There’s tremendous wealth inequality that we see in this country today between black communities and white communities,” Turner said. “And we show this through the story of Arlo, who runs a barber college actually, that’s an important place in the community for many people. But he also runs a loan fund, something we call a community development financial institution, and through this loan fund, which began in a shipping container on the parking lot of his barber college, he’s able to provide funds to people who may otherwise not qualify for a traditional loan.”

Watch the full conversation with all of the shorts filmmakers here.

The post ‘The Debit Card’ Director Hoped Oscar-Qualifying Short Could Expose ‘System’ of Overworked Au Pairs appeared first on TheWrap.

“In our movie, a macho, straight police officer picks up the red envelope and has to marry a gay ghost,” director Wei-Hao Cheng explained during a discussion with TheWrap’s Joe McGovern that was part of TheWrap Screening Series. “And that starts up a hilarious journey” — one in which the characters develop a “relationship that goes beyond friends and is closer to family.”

Now streaming on Netflix, “Marry My Dead Body” is Taiwan’s submission for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. During his Q&A with TheWrap, Wei-Hao explained that he saw his movie as representing “Taiwan’s contemporary significance” with regard to gay marriage: In 2019, Taiwan became the first region in Asia to legalize same sex marriage. “This movie strives to present the values of gay marriage and love, but in fact, there are still many problems of gender opposition in Taiwan and in East Asia,” Wei-Hao said. “And there are still many discriminations in our society. Under the patriarchal system in Asia, the gay community faces a lot of pressure from their families. But no matter what, through this movie, we attempt to return to love and equality.”

“Marry My Dead Body” is Wei-Hao’s fifth feature film and the latest in which he incorporates multiple genres, including horror, crime, mystery and sci-fi, into one project. “As a creator, I think this is one way to make this story fresh,” he said. “Because the audience is watching more and more films and the standard genre films are becoming too predictable, so much that they became less entertaining. So I wanted to flip the traditional genre of formulas to make the movie feel fresh and interesting.”

Of course, it’s one thing to mix genres on the page and another to balance tone and pacing so that it all works on screen. “It is a big challenge for me. In the beginning, everyone worried about [whether we were] mixing too many genres,” Wei-Hao said. His solution was to approach the movie in terms of foreground story (the ghost marriage) and background story (the action-mystery-thriller). “I kept reminding my cast and crew to pay more attention on the background story,” he said. “Mastering the background story is the key to mixing all genres smoothly.”

Watch the full conversation with Wei-Hao Cheng here.

The post How a Chinese Ghost Tradition Inspired the ‘Marry My Dead Body’ Director appeared first on TheWrap.

“We also tried other kinds of endings, but somehow the script always rejected the other, more optimistic endings,” Komandarev said. ” Finally we took the decision to keep this ending because it’s somehow open-ended. It provokes questions but doesn’t give answers.”

The third film in a trilogy about social problems in Bulgaria, “Blaga’s Lessons” — which is Bulgaria’s submission in the Oscars Best International Feature Film category — stars long-retired Bulgarian actress Eli Skorcheva as an elderly widow who takes drastic measures after she’s robbed of her life savings by a telephone scammer. For Komandarev, the film is the third in a trilogy that focuses on social problems in his home country as it struggles to adapt to its position in the E.U. in the post-Soviet era.

“The basic idea was to do an analysis and diagnosis of today’s Bulgaria, and also European society,” he said. “We wanted to provoke discussion. Bulgaria became a member of the European Union in 2007, and we were very optimistic about everything that would come. But in the last 20 years, we’ve lost one-third of the population because of economic emigration.

“My first profession was as a doctor. And when I was in medical school, our teachers told us that the best treatment starts with the right diagnosis. With our movies, we are trying to make something like a diagnosis with the hope that this will start some kind of treatment someday.”

At the screening, Komandarev explained that his transition from doctor to filmmaker began when the clinic where he worked received a donation of cameras and video editing equipment in order to make short films as part of family therapy. The head of the clinic asked for volunteers to work with the equipment. “She said, ‘Some of you must learn how to work with this,’ and all of the doctors, we looked at our shoes,” he said. “And finally she said, ‘Stephan, you are the youngest doctor, so you must take care of this.’

“So I started to shoot small things and do editing, and finally I was infected with this virus.”

With “Blaga’s Lessons,” Komandarev turned to the victimization of the elderly after making films about policemen and taxi drivers. And for his lead actress, he coaxed Bulgarian actress Eli Skorcheva out of retirement to deliver a heartbreaking and disturbing performance.

“She was one of the stars of the Bulgarian cinema in the ’80s,” he said. “But after ’89 (when the Iron Curtain fell and the country began a transition from Communism to democracy), she made the decision to stop completely with cinema and with theater. The cinema was almost not existing for eight, 10 years, and they started to play more commercial movies that were for her. She didn’t want to compromise, so she stopped with everything.

“She worked in an insurance company, she worked in a construction company. And when we met her, she was cleaning offices every morning from 5:00 until 8:30. But she has a dog and my casting director has a dog. He took his dog to the garden, and she was there with her dog. He recognized her, he started to talk with her, and finally he asked if one day she wants to return the Bulgarian cinema. And she said, ‘Why not? It depends on the script.’

“That same evening, I sent the script. And the next morning she called me and said, ‘Stephan, this is the script that I was waiting for for 30 years.”

“Blaga’s Lessons” has now won more than 15 awards at international festivals, beginning with the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. And Komandarev said he still feels the same urgency to make films about the social problems in Bulgaria as he did when he began his trilogy in 2017.

“Some things have changed in a positive way,” he said. “Most things haven’t. For me, as a director, living in a country with a lot of problems, I don’t feel comfortable to do entertaining movies or reality shows. I prefer to talk about the small people struggling with problems.

“There is a joke I like: ‘Bulgaria is the country of optimists. You know why? Because all the realists and the pessimists have already left.’

“And as an optimist, living there with my family, I want to do something.”

The post Why a Former Doctor Used Film to Diagnose Social Problems in ‘Blaga’s Lessons’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Jefferson discussed the origins of his film as part of TheWrap Screening Series this past Friday alongside “American Fiction” cast members Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander and John Ortiz. Watch the full panel here.

“I had a really huge professional failing in 2020, where this TV show that I thought was going to get on the air and was confident would go got killed at the last minute,” Jefferson told TheWrap awards editor Steve Pond.

Frustrated with the setback and unsure of where his career was headed, Jefferson started reading and eventually came across Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure.” It tells the story of a frustrated English professor who, angered with how his writing career has stalled while books with narratives depicting Black characters in poverty and crime enjoy success, writes his own novel satirizing such stereotypes.

It’s frustration that Jefferson knew all too well. Having been a journalist before going into film and TV, he was tired of being asked by editors to write about the racist murders of Black people like Trayvon Martin and Breonna Taylor, and that followed him into screenwriting.

“Three months before I found ‘Erasure,’ I had received a note on script from an executive who told me that I needed to make a character ‘blacker,’ and it came through an emissary,” Jefferson said. “This executive was afraid to tell me this to my face, and I said to the emissary, ‘I will indulge that note, as long as this person sits in front of me and tells me what it means to be ‘blacker.” And the note went away.”

But the professional struggles of “Erasure” protagonist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison were just the beginning. Cord was also amazed at how much he saw himself in Monk’s relationship with his family.

In the novel and in “American Fiction,” Monk struggles to take care of his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, especially after the death of his sister. At the same time, he tries to mend bridges with his gay brother, who does little to help care for their mother.

“I have two older brothers. We have a strange trio sibling dynamic, where it’s sometimes we’re closer, other times, we’re more distant. We have a very overbearing father figure who looms large in our lives, and I’m sure will after he’s gone,” Jefferson said.

“My mother didn’t die of Alzheimer’s, but she died of cancer about eight years ago,” Jefferson continued, “and one of my older brothers, like Tracee in the film, was the one living at home and felt the responsibility to take care of her during that time. And then I eventually moved home toward the end of her life to take care of her.”

That connection to the story convinced Jefferson that he had to direct “American Fiction,” as well as write it. The film marks Jefferson’s directorial debut, and he said he was “terrified” to do it, as he was unfamiliar with many of the technical aspects of directing.

“I felt like I knew the story that I was trying to tell with these characters and knew what Monk was going through on a fundamental, molecular level,” Jefferson said. “And I felt like as long as I know that, that can serve as my roadmap for all the decisions I need to make about the things that I don’t feel as comfortable with.”

“American Fiction” will be released by MGM in theaters on Dec. 15.

The post ‘American Fiction’ Found Its Roots in Cord Jefferson’s Miserable Pandemic Year | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

They also contemplated what could be in store for the show’s second season, which is currently in the works. As it turns out, they couldn’t speculate much because nobody has seen a script and Sheridan isn’t letting anything slip. But they’re all very excited to return. Sklenar joked that he is ready to (finally) be back on the ranch and share some scenes with Ford.

Mirren also revealed how excited she was to hop in the sack with her costar Harrison Ford. (The Oscar-winning actress is married to “Ray” and “An Officer and a Gentleman” filmmaker Taylor Hackford IRL.)

“He’s amazing. He really is. The stature he’s held, as a major, humongous movie star, all that time, at the same time as somebody who doesn’t love the limelight. He has this interior quality to him,” Mirren said. Their first collaboration was Peter Weir’s 1986 drama “The Mosquito Coast,” where they costarred with a young River Phoenix. “He’s come to a place where he can be easy with other actors. It’s immensely generous and incredibly professional. Not remotely spoiled movie star, at all. I genuinely love him. If I wasn’t married …”

That is when she told a very cheeky anecdote from the set of “1923.”

“I had to be in the bed with him, you know. I’m dressed up to here,” Mirren said, gesturing to her neck. “But I’m lying there and I’m thinking, I’m in bed with Harrison Ford. I was so excited, I can’t tell you. I had to pretend to be cool. Don’t tell him. Promise me.” Well. About that.

You can watch the entire Q&A here.

And you can stream “1923” right now on Paramount+.

The post ‘1923’ Star Helen Mirren Jokes She Was ‘So Excited’ to Get Into Bed with Harrison Ford: ‘I Had to Pretend to Be Cool’ (Video) appeared first on TheWrap.