Category Archives: Profiles

Another Chance to Enchant? It’s ‘Galavant’

Leave a reply

Menken

It’s been a few months since I’ve seen my name in print, and I’m excited to make my debut in Emmy Magazine (which is distributed to Academy of Television Arts & Sciences members) with a feature on Alan Menken in the new December issue. Menken is composing songs — 31 in all! — for ABC’s upcoming eight-episode musical comedy series Galavant, which debuts Jan. 4. As I wrote,

It’s been a rewarding, but daunting challenge. Instead of composing three- or four-minute songs, as Menken is used to, he’s lucky to get two minutes on TV, give Galavant‘s twenty-one-and-a-half-minute running time. “You hone your skill in a different way,” he observes. “You learn to be more concise and figure out what’s going to work for the medium.”

Menken also discussed his early success with Little Shop of Horrors and the “mixed blessing” of being synonymous with “Disney music” after The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. And yes, he talks about how he is only an Emmy short of the coveted EGOT (he has 11 Grammys, eight Oscars and a Tony under his belt). I also spoke with Galavant creator Dan Fogelman and Menken’s lyricist partner Glenn Slater about the legendary composer.

Here’s the whole profile (click to enlarge):

Menken Emmy mag

I really enjoyed my first Emmy Magazine feature, and I’ve already lined up several more stories in the coming months. You can read (and buy) Emmy‘s entire December issue here.

Can NBC Create Another Real-Time Sensation With Peter Pan Live?

Leave a reply

peter-pan-live

At Adweek, I had a terrific chat with NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt, who admitted that he went to bed last Dec. 5, after watching The Sound of Music Live!, he was steeling himself for low ratings the next morning.

“I was thinking, ‘I’m praying for a 2 rating, because I could defend a 2,'” he told Adweek. “And then I thought, ‘Oh God, I could probably spin a 1.7 or 1.8 to probably being almost a 2.’ I really was hoping it would be a 2.”

Instead, the final 18-49 rating was almost triple that number, which is why Greenblatt is doubling down this year, with Peter Pan Live! Greenblatt talked with me about why Sound of Music ended up being so success, his other plans for live TV on NBC and which musicals he is — and isn’t — considering putting on the air going forward.

Can NBC Create Another Real-Time Sensation With Peter Pan Live? 

Lisa Kudrow is Feeling the Pressure to Make Her ‘Comeback’ Worth the 9-Year Wait

Leave a reply

lisa-kudrow

I unexpectedly had a terrific chat with Lisa Kudrow during the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, and turned that into this Adweek profile about The Comeback’s return on Sunday, nine years after HBO canceled it. She talked with me about playing both sides of the HBO/Showtime rivalry, reviving The Comeback, how her guest-appearance on Scandal last season helped make it happen and what’s next for Valerie Cherish.

Lisa Kudrow is Feeling the Pressure to Make Her Comeback Worth the 9-Year Wait

Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris on His Best and Worst Emcee Moments

Leave a reply

Neil Patrick Harris

Today, Neil Patrick Harris was named to host pretty much the only awards show he has yet to emcee: the king of them all, the Oscars. In light of the news, I suggested that the Daily Beast dust off my interview with him from last year about his best and worst hosting moments, and that’s exactly what they did:

Neil Patrick Harris on His Best and Worst Emcee Moments

The TV Superhero Guru Behind ‘The Flash’

Leave a reply

berlanti the flash

Greg Berlanti and I have been Twitter friends since back in 2012, when I fell for his USA summer miniseries Political Animals. But we’d never actually met until we sat down together at TCA summer tour to do this Daily Beast profile.

One of TV’s most prolific producers — he’s co-showrunner on Arrow and The Flash, a producer on The Mysteries of Laura, has three series (and counting) in development for next season, and is also producing the bigscreen Peter Pan reboot Pan — Berlanti talked about what’s in store for The Flash, his obsession with comics, how he’s succeeded with TV comic adaptations where Marvel has failed and the disadvantage to having so many projects on his plate:

The only slight disadvantage to doing more and more things is you really have to be where the problems are. So you don’t get to be as much where things are going well. And so, if there’s two things that I’m working on that are going well, I’m not in that story room or on that set. I’m wherever we’re having some challenges. Then, by the time we take care of those, I go back to the other ones. So the disadvantage of having multiple things is on a day where everything is going badly on all things. You want to shoot yourself! The advantage is that’s usually not the case. Usually one or two things are going all right, and it buoys your spirits a little bit.

His take on The Flash is broadcast’s best pilot this fall. While almost all new shows take much of the first season to find their way, Flash arrives impressively fully-formed and self-assured. And, oh yeah, it’s a helluva lot of fun.

The TV Superhero Guru Behind ‘The Flash’

How Cristin Milioti Met Sitcom Stardom

Leave a reply

cristin milioti

What if How I Met Your Mother had actually been about, you know, how Ted met the Mother? The result would have been something like A to Z, the new NBC romantic comedy starring, yes, Cristin Milioti, who played the Mother in that show’s final season last year. At The Daily Beast, I spoke to the charming actress — who, it turns out, went to the same high school as I did (a full decade either before or after me; I’ll never tell) — about the controversial HIMYM finale, dropping out of college, what she learned from Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street and (spoiler alert) how she discovered the Mother’s fate:

Milioti first discovered Tracy’s fate late last year, at the show’s Christmas party. “I was sitting with Craig and we were like three cocktails in,” she says. “He’s very happy and giddy when he gets a little tipsy, and he said, ‘Do you want to know how the series ends?’ I was also tipsy and I was like, ‘What, do I die?’—as a joke. Then he got real serious and was like, ‘Wait, do you know?’ He told me how it happens, and I sat there bawling. I just didn’t see it coming.”

I did this interview with her at TCA summer tour; it was nice to be able to do this one in person and swap South Jersey memories.

How Cristin Milioti Met Sitcom Stardom

This is How Amazon Developed Its First Great TV Series

Leave a reply

amazons first great series

Transparent, which debuts Friday, is not just Amazon’s first great series, but it’s fall’s best new show. At TCA, I spoke with creator Jill Soloway and star Jeffrey Tambor for this Quartz piece about this important, moving series, and why Amazon was the only place for it:

“We have this absolutely unprecedented amount of creative freedom. So Amazon to me wasn’t necessarily like a TV network, it was a really vital and vibrant distribution system that would be able to get the stuff to the people quickly,” said Soloway, who was a writer and co-executive producer on Six Feet Under. “It feels more like I got to make a five-hour movie that already had distribution in place than it did like anything I would ever do for CBS that’s an episode to episode deal. There was none of that [network] interference: these stop signs that you constantly have to deal with, that really interrupt your flow and your connection to your inspiration, in any kind of TV. This is nothing like TV! It’s not TV, it’s not HBO, it’s Amazon!”

Soloway was also frank about being wary of Amazon’s decision to release Transparent’s entire first season at once, Netflix-style.

“That was Amazon’s decision,” said Soloway. “In some ways, I was excited because it makes us like House of Cards or Orange, and I’m happy to be compared to shows like that. But I think as a showrunner, I have to get over the idea that there’s not going to be a, ‘And then next Friday, they’ll see the next piece!’ That’s different.”

You’ll also want to read what prompted Tambor to channel his Larry Sanders Show alter ego, Hank Kingsley. But even more importantly, make sure you watch Transparent!

This is how Amazon developed its first great TV series

‘NCIS’s’ Mark Harmon is the World’s Biggest TV Star

Leave a reply

mark harmon

Sometimes, the best stories fall into your lap when you least expect them. At TCA summer tour, I was attending the CBS/Showtime/CW party when I unexpectedly was given face time with Mark Harmon, who very rarely grants interviews (I fact I know firsthand, after spending years unsuccessfully trying to land an interview with him while I was at People). The result is this somewhat unconventional Daily Beast profile of Harmon, who is the world’s biggest star, but also one of its most humble. As I wrote,

Harmon is an anomaly in today’s overshare-first-ask-questions-later pop culture: an anti-celeb. There’s no gushing about the secrets of his 27-year marriage to Mork & Mindy star Pam Dawber (which is more like 270 in Hollywood years), no off-the-cuff speeches about politics or anything else controversial; no statements, in fact, that aren’t in some way related to his show. And his actions speak just as softly as his words: When you search “Mark Harmon” on TMZ, not a single story comes up, which doesn’t even seem possible. He’s perhaps the only person in Hollywood who says he wants his work to speak for itself, and actually means it.

Harmon talks about his quiet approach to stardom, whether he feels pressure as the man at the center of a billion-dollar franchise, how he came to executive produce NCIS: New Orleans and how much longer he’ll stick around on NCIS, which is enterting its 12th season.

NCIS’s Mark Harmon is the World’s Biggest TV Star

The Leaner, Meaner Season 2 of ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

Leave a reply

agents of shield s2

Back in May, I wrote about how Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD had finally found its way. As the show prepares to kick off Season 2, I spoke with its two showrunners, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen for this Daily Beast interview about balancing secrecy and spoilers, what they learned from Season 1’s rocky start and which Marvel Universe characters will (and won’t) be making appearances this season. After having her hands tied for much of last season, being forced to keep quiet about, and then react to, the big reveal from Captain America: The Winter Solider, Tancharoen talks about the freedom of Season 2:

Well, we have a very clear big bad. We have Hydra. It’s very nice and liberating to say “Hydra” and have it out in the open! Last season was definitely challenging, because we were not allowed to mention them or allude to a mole of any kind. So now, coming into Season 2, we exist in a new paradigm. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are viewed as one and the same.  So we’re putting our characters through a different sort of journey, where they still want to be out there and helping the world and the people through this world, but they have to do it from the shadows.

They also discuss the possible return of Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Joss Whedon’s level in involvement in the show and — something of particular interest to me — if they will can finally take the periods out of SHIELD (which is something that I’ve already done on this site).

The Leaner, Meaner Season 2 of ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

‘Parade’: Fall TV Preview

Leave a reply

Parade FallPrev2014

After a bit of a hiatus, I returned to Parade to put together a Fall TV Preview, which was one of my first stories for them last year. My take on this shows are how they managed to be both fresh and familiar — and have a lot in common with some of your favorite shows.

When I filed, I didn’t know that this would be my very last Parade story. But sadly, the magazine was sold last week and the entire editorial staff, including all my favorite editors, was laid off as editorial operations move from New York to Nashville

I’ll miss you Parade; it’s been fun!