#Dr. Ernie Walker
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Bison calves stand in Saskatchewan’s Wanuskewin Heritage Park, the first to be born in the the Archaeological Site and Cultural Centre in more than 150 years. Photo By WanuskewinHeritage Park
How Canadian Bison Have Been Brought Back From The Brink In Saskatchewan
In Saskatchewan’s Wanuskewin Heritage Park, bison are a vital piece of the indigenous cultural history and have been brought back from the brink to help rewild fragile grasslands.
— By Karen Gardiner | Published June 3, 2023 | July 29th, 2025
Dr. Ernie Walker has heard enough tired takes on Saskatchewan’s flat landscape. “A lot of people refer to the prairies as big and empty or useless,” he says, indignant, as he leads me around Wanuskewin Heritage Park, an archaeological site and cultural centre 15 minutes from the Saskatchewan city of Saskatoon. “That’s not it. What’s significant about the prairies is that it’s subtle.”
Standing under a big blue sky, amid dry rolling grassland that stretches uninterrupted all the way to the horizon, I think I understand the misconception: lacking mountains and with sparse trees, this isn’t exactly the type of landscape that wallops you with its dramatic features. But if there’s anyone who can convincingly argue for the value of this place, it’s Walker.
The park’s founder and chief archeologist, Walker has spent four decades with his hands in Wanuskewin’s dirt, turning up artefacts — including stone and bone tools, amulets and even gaming pieces — that have whispered to him stories of this land’s significance. Working here as a ranch hand in the early 1980s, he convinced his boss that the land had great archaeological importance. That slowly set in motion the park’s establishment, which involved a rare-for-the-time collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
“When visitors look at the landscape, I’m always interested in what they’re actually seeing,” Walker continues. “They need to know the story behind this place.” The story here is of 6,000 years of almost uninterrupted human occupation. That narrative was drummed into the land by millions of bison hooves until the animals met a violent end. But now, the bison are back and they’re writing a new chapter.
An abandoned building stands along the roads of rural Saskatchewan. Photo By Design Pics Inc, Alamy
A Place of Sanctuary
In the Nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree) language, ‘Wanuskewin’ roughly translates as ‘sanctuary’. Lying at the fertile confluence of the South Saskatchewan River and Opimihaw Creek, it was a gathering place for the people of the Northern Plains — the Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibwa, Assiniboine, Nakota and Dakota — who all followed bison herds and found sustenance and shelter here. Before European settlement, this land was home to vast numbers of bison (also known as buffalo) and the multitudes of species they supported, from the insects that thrived in the bison’s manure and the birds that fed on those insects to the humans that were dependent on the bison’s meat and skin.
But then came catastrophe. Bison were deliberately slaughtered to near extinction, a tactic used by settlers to starve Indigenous people into submission. “Around 400 years ago, there were 26 to 30 million bison on the Great Plains in North America,” Walker says. “By the 1890s, there were just 1,200.”
With the bison and their way of life gone, Plains people were left with little choice but to sign Treaty Six, an 1876 agreement with the British Crown that opened up the land for European settlement and promised one square mile of land to every Indigenous family of five. They were then corralled onto reserves.
“What if I were to come to all of your houses, empty your fridges and say you guys have to move to the s****y part of town?” Wearing a fringed buckskin waistcoat adorned with beaded flowers, Jordan Daniels, a member of the Mistawasis Nêhiyawak (Cree) Nation, raises his voice above the prairie wind to ensure we understand the depth of his ancestors’ loss. I’ve left Walker for now and joined a small group along Wanuskewin’s bison viewing trail where we’ll see and learn about Wanuskewin’s reestablished herd.
“The bison were a central part of our existence,” Daniels explains. “We made our teepees out of them. They were a main food source. Everything we needed for sustenance came from these animals.” There was also an emotional connection. Many Indigenous people consider bison kin, and the animal is ubiquitous in Indigenous stories and art. “They played a central role in our beliefs and in our way of seeing the world around us,” explains Daniels.
Bringing back the bison to Wanuskewin was always the park’s founders’ dream. In 2019, the animals finally came home. Six calves from Saskatchewan’s Grasslands National Park established the herd, followed by an additional five animals from the United States with ancestral ties to Yellowstone National Park. The herd, which has grown to 12, is now helping to restore native grasses. North America’s grasslands are one of the most endangered biomes in the world and bison, a keystone species, can help restore balance between animals, land and humans.
While grazing, Daniels explains, bison’s hooves aerate soil and help to disperse seeds, and by wallowing (rolling around), they create depressions that fill with rainwater and stimulate plant growth and provide habitat for microorganisms, amphibians and insects. “They’re ecologically unmatched,” he says. “But, I feel, nothing outweighs the cultural factor of having bison back here.”
Daniels’ connection is intensely personal. He explains that his seven-times great grandfather was Chief Mistawasis, the first chief in Saskatchewan to sign on to Treaty Six. Before signing, Daniels says, Mistawasis “had spent his life living how our people have done since time immemorial, out on the plains hunting bison. And today, I’m able to look at animals that are genetically close to the ones that he’d have interacted with. It’s a very impactful and powerful thing.”
Tianna McCabe, a Navajo, Arapaho and Cree powwow dancer, explains the significance of her ornate regalia. Photo By Concepts/KareeDavidsonPhotography.Com
Happy To Be Home
Wanuskewin is about protecting the future as much as preserving the past. I meet with young Indigenous people who demonstrate aspects of their cultures, once suppressed, now thriving. Tianna McCabe, a Navajo, Arapaho and Cree powwow dancer, explains the significance of every fabric and colour of her ornate regalia before hopping her way through an Old Style Fancy Shawl dance, her feet landing with each staccato beat of a drum.
As the day eases into night, I follow a group to the top of a bluff to meet Métis chef Jenni Lessard, who’s prepared our Han Wi (‘moon dinner’ in Dakota language). As well as bison tenderloin, sourced from a nearby farm and seasoned with yarrow and sage, we eat pickled spruce tips and bannock bread with chokecherry syrup. Sipping wild mint and fireweed tea, we gather around a fire, rejoined by Dr Ernie Walker to hear “a miraculous story”.
Dezaray Wapass, a Fancy Shawl dancer, performs in Wanuskewin National Park. Photo By Concets/KareeDavidsonPhotography.Com
In August 2020, Walker was visiting the bison herd when he noticed a boulder protruding from a patch of vegetation the animals had worn away. Seeing a groove cut across the top of it and, brushing away the dirt, he spotted more cuts and realised what he was seeing was a petroglyph. The boulder turned out to be a ‘ribstone’, so-called because its engraved motifs represent bison ribs. Three more petroglyphs were later unearthed, as well as the stone knife used to carve them.
What the bison did when they uncovered those petroglyphs was to complete the story of Wanuskewin. “We’d always lamented that, here in the park, we’ve got [archeological sites like] buffalo jumps, teepee rings and North America’s most northerly medicine wheel, but we didn’t have any rock art,” explains Walker.
Wanuskewin is on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage designation. The discovery of the petroglyphs, Walker believes, has boosted its chances. He tells me: “The stones complete everything you’d expect to find on the Northern Plains, but you don’t usually find those things within walking distance of each other.”
Dressed in a white Stetson, blue jeans and cowboy boots, Walker retains the appearance of a young ranch hand but, after 40 years of arguing for this place, I sense he’s content to rest a little. “I’ve told this story many times before,” he says. Now, the bison have picked up Wanuskewin’s epic story and it’s time to let them tell it once again.
#Canadian Bison#Saskatchewan#Wanuskewin Heritage Park#Archaeological Site and Cultural Centre#Dr. Ernie Walker#Chief Archeologist#Nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree) Language#Wanuskewin (Sanctuary)#Blackfoot Cree Ojibwa Assiniboine Nakota and Dakota#Jordan Daniels#Mistawasis Nêhiyawak (Cree) Nation#Indigenous People#Grasslands National Park#Tianna McCabe a Navajo Arapaho and Cree Powwow Dancer 💃#Old Style Fancy Shawl Dance 💃#Métis chef Jenni Lessard#Han Wi (‘Moon Dinner’ in Dakota Language)#Chokecherry Syrup#Petroglyphs#UNESCO World Heritage
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Sandman #2 (May 1975) by DC Comics
Written by Michael Fleisher, drawn by Ernie Chan and Mike Royer, cover by Jack Kirby and MIke Royer.
#Sandman#Vintage Comics#DC Comics#1975#Jack Kirby#Ernie Chan#Mike Royer#MIchael Fliesher#Jed Walker#Dr Spider#Etsy#Comic Books#Comics#The Sandman
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List of Actors in Sanctuary who Also Appeared in Stargate (Spanning Entire Franchise).
Main Cast (Counting Regular Major Appearances):
Amanda Tapping. Sanctuary: Helen Magnus. Stargate: Sam Carter.
Christopher Heyerdahl. Sanctuary: John Druitt, Bigfoot. Stargate SG-1: Pallin. Stargate Atlantis: Halling and Todd the Wraith.
Ryan Robbins. Sanctuary: Henry Foss. Stargate Atlantis: Ladon Radim.
Agam Darshi. Sanctuary; Kate Freelander. Stargates Atlantis: Novo and Athosian 2.
Jonathon Young. Sanctuary: Nikola Tesla. Stargate Atlantis: Dr. Parrish.
Peter Wingfield. Sanctuary: James Watson. Stargate SG-1: Hebron and Taneth.
Jim Byrnes. Sanctuary: Gregory Magnus. Stargate SG-1: Documentary Narrator (Heroes Part 2). Stargate Infinity: voice (no character listed).
Significant Stargate Actors Not in Main Cast of Sanctuary:
Michael Shanks. Sanctuary: Jimmy (one episode). Stargate: Daniel Jackson.
Tom McBeath. Sanctuary: General Villanova. Stargate SG-1: Colonel Harry Maybourne.
Vincent Gale. Sanctuary: Nigel Griffin. Stargate SG-1: Deputy - Agent Cross. Stargate Universe: Morrison. (he was significant in Sanctuary and had a high episode list for Stargate, so no arguing)
Colin Cunnigham. Sanctuary: Gerald (one episode). Stargate: Major Paul Davis.
Paul McGillion. Sanctuary: Terrance Wexford (four eps + webisodes). Stargate Atlantis: Carson Beckett.
David Hewlett. Sanctuary: Larry Tolson (webisodes). Stargate: Rodney McKay.
Kavan Smith. Sanctuary: Joe Kavanaugh (two episodes + webisodes). Stargate: Evan Lorne.
David Nykl. Sanctuary: Strickland (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Radek Zelenka.
Sarah Strange. Sanctuary: Allison Grant (one episode). Stargate: Morgan Le Fey.
Dan Shea. Sanctuary: Transit Cop 2 (one episode). Stargate: Sergeant Siler.
Gary Jones. Sanctuary: George (one episode). Stargate: Walter Harriman.
Peter Flemming. Sanctuary: FBI Agent Bruce Tanner (one episode). Stargate: Agent Barret.
Martin Christopher. Sanctuary: False Priest/Father Clark. Stargate: Kevin Marks.
Barclay Hope. Sanctuary: Security Force Commander (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Col. Lionel Pendergast.
Peter DeLuise. Sanctuary: Ernie Watts (one episode/webisodes). Stargate SG-1: Sal's Diner Customer, Wormhole X-treme Replacement Actor, plus 20 other roles. Stargate Atlantis: Dr. P. Smith (uncredited). Stargate Universe: Peter. (<- also directed all four shows)
Significant in Sanctuary but not Stargate:
Shekhar Paleja (Credited in both as Shaker Paleja). Sanctuary: Ravi Ganapathiraman. Stargate SG-1: Jaffa. Stargate Atlantis: Doctor (uncredited, six episodes).
Ian Tracey. Sanctuary: Adam Worth. Stargate SG-1: Smith.
Pascale Hutton. Sanctuary: Abby Corrigan. Stargate Atlantis: First Officer Trebel. (<- almost/should have been main cast in Sanctuary)
Carlo Rota. Sanctuary: Richard Feliz. Stargate Universe: Carl Strom.
Other Actors in Mostly Minor Roles in Both (but often more significant in Sanctuary, for obvious reasons) Listed in Order of Sanctuary Appearance:
Lauren K. Robek (Credited as Kirsten Robeck in both). Sanctuary: Maryanne Zimmerman (three episodes). Stargate SG-1: Lieutenant Astor.
Sheri Rabold (credited as Sheri Noel in all). Sanctuary: Molly (two episodes/webisodes), Helen Magnus Stand-in. Stargate SG-1: Physiotherapist. Stargate Atlantis: Scientist, Lab assistant.
Laura Mennel. Sanctuary: Caird (one episode/webisodes). Stargate SG-1: Mary. Stargate Atlantis: Sanir.
Alex Zahara. Sanctuary: Carver (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Motion Capture Warrior, Warrick Finn, Iron Shirt, Eggar, Shy One, Alien Leader, Alien #1, Micahel Xe'ls.
Peter Bryant. Sanctuary: Cabal Team Leader (two episodes). Stargate SG-1: Hoskins and Fro'tak.
MacKenzie Gray. Sanctuary: Mr. Jones (one episode). Stargate Infinity: Pahk'kal, Napoleon Bonaparte (voices).
Matthew Walker. Sanctuary: Oliver Braithewaite (one episode). Stargate SG-1/The Ark of Truth: Merlin/Roham.
David Richmond-Peck. Sanctuary: Jake Polanski (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Jaffa Leader. Stargate Atlantis: Toran.
Panou. Sanctuary: Sylvio (two episodes). Stargate SG-1: Lt. Fisher.
Katherine Isabelle. Sanctuary: Sophie (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Valencia.
Chuck Campell. Sanctuary: Two-Faced Guy. Stargate: Chuck the Technician.
Gabrielle Rose. Sanctuary: Ruth Meyers (one episode). Stargate: The Ark of Truth: Alterean Woman #2.
Daryl Shuttleworth. Sanctuary: (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Commander Tegar, Commander Rigar.
Rukiya Bernard. Sanctuary: Kayla Bradley (one episode). Stargate Universe: Airman Richmond.
Alex Diakun. Sanctuary: Doctor (three episodes). Stargate SG-1: Tarek Solaman.
Chris Gauthier. Sanctuary: Walter (two episodes). Stargate: Mattas and Hertis.
Anne Marie DeLuise. Sanctuary: Rachel (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Amy Vandenberg, Farrell.
Aleks Paunovic. Sanctuary: Duke (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Rakai.
Ryan Kennedy. Sanctuary: Darrin Wilson (one episode). Stargate Universe: Dr. Williams.
Terry Chen. Sanctuary: Charles (three episodes). Stargate SG-1: Monk.
Nimet Kanji. Sanctuary: Pili (two episodes). Stargate Atlantis: Doctor.
Ron Selmour. Sanctuary: Kanaan (three episodes). Stargate Atlantis: Jannick.
Raquel Riskin. Sanctuary: Cheryl (one episode). Stargate Universe: Mindy.
Eric Keenleyside. Sanctuary: Det. Michael Bronson (one episodes). Stargate SG-1: Fred.
Michael J Rogers. Sanctuary: Stanley O'Farrel (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Major Escher, Col. Richard Kendrick, Colonel John Michaels.
Fabrice Grover. Sanctuary: Father Nathaniel Jensen (one episode). Stargate: The Ark of Truth: Amelius.
Allison Hossack. Sanctuary: Lillian (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Zerina Valk. Stargate Atlantis: Perna.
Scott McNeil. Sanctuary: Birot (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Kefflin, Townsperson.
Jody Thompson. Sanctuary: Fallon (three episodes). Stargate Atlantis: Hospital Nurse.
Nels Lannarson. Sanctuary: Commander Tollan, Praxian Guardsman. (two episodes). Stargate SG-1: Major Green. Stargate Atlantis: Captain Holland.
Sean Rogerson. Sanctuary: Castor (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Nevik.
Richard de Klerk. Sanctuary: U.S. Sergeant (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Dominic, Joe.
Aaron Brooks. Sanctuary: Lieutenant Hallman (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Nisal.
Collen Winton. Sanctuary: Anna (one episode). Stargate SG-1: National Security Advisor, Dr. Greene.
David Milchard. Sanctuary: Garris. Stargate Atlantis: SGC Technician.
Greyston Holt. Sanctuary: Lt. Coxswell (two episodes). Stargate Universe: Corporal Reynolds.
Brian Markinson. Sanctuary: Greg Addison. Stargate SG-1: Lotan.
Lara Gilchrist. Sanctuary: Cassidy (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Dr. Hewston.
John Novak. Sanctuary: Thug Boss (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Colonel William Ronson.
Martin Cummins. Sanctuary: Brad Sylvester (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Aiden Corso.
Kurt Evans. Sanctuary: Agent Gavin Crealy (two episodes). Stargate SG-1: Col. Johnson.
Sage Brocklebank. Sanctuary: Canadian Press Photographer (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Rand Protectorate Tech.
Kwesi Ameyaw. Sanctuary: Colonel Bosh (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Olokun. Stargate Atlantis: Technical Sergeant.
J.C. Williams. Sanctuary: SCIU Agent (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Jaffa (uncredited), Stargate Universe: Marine (uncredited).
Caroline Cave. Sanctuary: Sheila Delacourt (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Dr. Cole. Stargate Universe: Dana.
Brent Stait. Sanctuary: Finn Noland (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Major Louis Ferretti.
Richard Stroh. Sanctuary: Orin (one episode). Stargate Atlantis: Genii Soldier #2.
Venus Terzo. Sanctuary: Capt. Franklin (one episode). Stargate SG-1: Dr. Francine Michaels.
I spent entirely too much time on this, but I really got going. I also probably missed a few people (and didn't even start on the crew because of so much overlap). I'm not sure if this is just Vancouver film industry at work or what, but I am done.
#sanctuary#stargate sg1#stargate atlantis#stargate universe#please someone care#i spent so much time on this
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"Mo Soul" Player Playlist 10 April
Jaffa - Elevator
Clara Hill Feat. Marc Mac - Everything
Roux Spana - Turn Me Out
Alley Pat - Pats Rubber Band
Dr. John - Kingdom Οf Izzness
Fkj & Tom Misch - Losing My Way
Cloud - Summer Rain
Ernie Hines - Our Generation
The Soul Motivators - Gravy Train
Keith Mansfield - Funky Fanfare
Skalpel - Ninjazz
Nicola Conte Apresenta Rosalia De Souza - Maria Moita
Skowa & Mafia - Deus Me Faca Funky
Sleep Walker - Brotherhood (Marc Marc Dirty Jazz Remix)
John Miles - Slow Down
If you really want to enjoy music and help musicians and bands, buy their lp’s or cd’s and don’t download mp3 formats. There is nothing like good quality sound!!!
(Angel Lo Verde / Mo Soul)
#mo soul#playlist#music#soul#blues#funk#jazz#lounge#reggae#rock#fusion#house#r&b#afro funk#disco funk#acid jazz#nu jazz
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CAIN, Cochren & Co., Jason Crabb To Headline 40 Days & 40 Nights Christian Music Festival
Cain, Cochren & Co., and Jason Crabb are set to headline the 40 Days & 40 Nights Christian Music Festival at the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum presented by Abraham Productions. The festival will feature a diverse lineup of performers in Christian music with current favorites and legendary artists.
Abraham Productions, Inc. is pleased to announce the Museum of the Bible as the platinum sponsor for the world’s largest Christian music Festival 40 Days & 40 Nights of Christian Music at the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum, August 1-September 9, 2023 in northern Kentucky.
As the flagship sponsor of the world’s largest Christian music festival, the Museum of the Bible will be represented at all stages including the huge Answers Center and outdoor Noah’s Village at the Ark Encounter and the newly renovated Legacy Hall at the Creation Museum.
In addition to the sponsorship, Abraham Productions and Sea Walker Media are happy to announce a new multi-day Christian music event that will come to the World Stage Theater and Gathering Room at the Museum of the Bible in the early Fall of 2024. The event will feature iconic artists and national speakers presenting the gospel in the heart of Washington, D.C. Details regarding this multi-day event will be released later this year.
Templeton Tours, Inc., the parent company of Singing At Sea, also joins the roster of great sponsors for the World’s Largest Christian Music Festival, along with returning sponsors Christian Healthcare Ministries and Singing News Brands.
The Ark Encounter was recently voted the #1 Best Religious Museum by USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards and the Creation Museum finished a close second. The Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are the top family-friendly destinations for people throughout the United States and many countries around the world.
Ken Ham, founder, and CEO of Answers in Genesis (parent company of the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum) is excited that the 40 Days and 40 Nights Christian Music Festival will expand in 2023 with its evangelistic concerts at both the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum. Ham declares: “Each of these sponsors is a perfect fit for this incredible event and we are appreciative. Our plans are to continue to build this event and be a blessing and encouragement to attendees for many years to come.” The life-size Noah’s Ark is located south of Cincinnati.
The 40 Days & 40 Nights of Christian Music Festival continues to grow in popularity with more than 40,000 attendees in 2022. In 2023, the event expands again with additional concerts being added and a talent roster that is second to none. Concerts will be held daily at the Ark Encounter, and Wednesday and Thursday morning concerts will be presented at Creation Museum.
Performing artists include Cain, Triumphant, Selah, Inspirations, Cochren & Co, Ernie Haase & Signature Sound, Jason Crabb, Natalie Layne, Karen Peck & New River, Isaacs, Joseph Habedank, Booth Brothers, Jimmy Fortune, The Hoppers, and more than 100 other popular artists will be performing.
In addition to the incredible music, there will be inspiring messages and teaching from sought-after speakers like Ken Ham, Dr. Robert Jeffress, Dr. Jeff Laborg, Pastor Javon Ruff, Comedian Dennis Swanberg, Tim Lovelace, and many others.
Ray Flynn, President & CEO of Abraham Productions, Inc. and Sea Walker Media Corporation, said: “We are extremely honored and thankful to have the opportunity to partner with the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum in presenting this mega Christian Music Festival at the top family destinations in America. We are also very thankful for our great sponsors Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, Christian Healthcare Ministries, Templeton Tours – Singing at Sea, and Singing News Brands. We are also excited to partner with the Museum of the Bible on this major new event coming to World Stage Theater in the Fall of 2024.”
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SPN Casting Sides (usually 3-10+ pgs from script):
1.10 Asylum (Kat, Gavin)
1.13 Route 666 (Audrey Robinson, Cassie Robinson, Harold Todd, Jimmy Anderson)
1.14 Nightmare (Alice Miller, Max Miller)
1.15 The Benders (Deputy Kathleen Hudak, “Abraham Bender”)
1.17 Hell House (Craig Thursten, "Ernie”, “Harold”)
1.18 Something Wicked (Michael, Young Dean)
1.19 Provenance (Sarah Blake)
1.20 Dead Man's Blood (Beau, Kate, Luther)
1.21 Salvation (Tom)
1.22 Devil's Trap (Bobby Singer)
2.01 In My Time of Dying (Tessa, “Janitor”)
2.02 Everybody Loves a Clown (Ellen, “Miles”, “Alex” 12 July 2006, “Alex” 14 July 2006)
2.03 Bloodlust (Gordon Walker, Lenore)
2.04 Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (Angela Mason, Neil)
2.05 Simon Said (Andy Gillette)
2.07 The Usual Suspects (Detective Pete Sheridan)
2.08 Crossroad Blues (Crossroads Demon, George Darrow, Robert Johnson)
2.09 Croatoan (Dr. Lee, “Vargo”)
2.10 Hunted (Ava)
2.11 Playthings (Susan)
2.12 Nightshifter (Agent Henriksen, Ronald)
2.13 Houses of the Holy (Father Thomas Gregory, Father Reynolds)
2.15 Tall Tales (Frat Boy, “Janitor”)
2.16 Roadkill (David McNamara)
2.18 Hollywood Babylon (Director, Tara Benchley)
2.19 Folsom Prison Blues (Deacon Kaylor, Mara Davis, Randall)
2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One (Jake Talley, Lily)
3.01 The Magnificent Seven (Isaac, Walter Rosen)
3.02 The Kids Are Alright (Ben Braeden)
3.03 Bad Day at Black Rock (Bela Talbot, Creedy, Kubrick)
3.04 Sin City (Father Gil, “Iggy”, Ruby)
3.05 Bedtime Stories (Crossroads Demon, Dr. Garrison)
3.06 Red Sky at Morning (Gertrude Case)
3.07 Fresh Blood (Dixon)
3.08 A Very Supernatural Christmas (Young Dean, Young Sam, Edward, Madge)
3.09 Malleus Maleficarum (Elizabeth, Renee, Tammi Benton)
3.10 Dream a Little Dream of Me (Dream!Dean, Jeremy Frost)
3.12 Jus in Bello (Deputy Phil Amici, Nancy Fitzgerald, Sheriff Dodd)
4.01 Lazarus Rising (Castiel, "Kristy”, Pamela Barnes)
4.03 In the Beginning (Young Mary, Young John, Deanna Campbell)
4.04 Metamorphosis (Michelle Montgomery, Jack Montgomery, Travis)
4.05 Monster Movie (Jamie, Dracula)
4.06 Yellow Fever (Luther Garland, Sheriff Ed Britton, John Garland)
4.07 It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester (Tracy Davis, Don Harding, Uriel)
4.08 Wishful Thinking (Wes Mondale, Hope Lynn Casey)
4.09 I Know What You Did Last Summer (Alastair, Anna Milton)
SPN Misc. Crew Documents:
8.10 Torn and Frayed (one line schedule)
14.05 Nightmare Logic (longform breakdown)
14.07 Unhuman Nature (technical package)
14.13 Lebanon (technical package)
15.04 Atomic Monsters (prep memo)
SPN Scripts (in all stages):
1.01 Pilot (lavender revisions)
1.03 Dead in the Water (production draft)
1.04 Phantom Traveler (yellow revisions)
1.10 Asylum (blue draft)
1.12 Faith (production draft)
1.13 Route 666 (studio draft)
1.14 Nightmare (production draft)
2.03 Bloodlust (production draft)
2.11 Playthings (production draft)
2.12 Nightshifter (blue draft)
2.21 All Hell Breaks Loose: Part One (blue revisions)
3.15 Time Is on My Side (production draft)
4.11 Family Remains (studio story arena, yellow revisions)
4.12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag (network arena pitch)
4.13 After School Special (studio story arena)
4.14 Sex and Violence (network arena pitch)
4.17 It's a Terrible Life (blue revisions w/director’s notes)
4.20 The Rapture (outline)
5.09 The Real Ghostbusters (production draft w/director’s notes)
5.10 Abandon All Hope... (goldenrod revisions)
5.15 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (network draft)
5.22 Swan Song (production draft)
6.13 Unforgiven (green draft)
8.11 LARP and the Real Girl (production draft)
9.07 Bad Boys (2nd writer’s draft)
9.20 Bloodlines (2nd network draft)
9.22 Stairway to Heaven (production draft)
9.23 Do You Believe in Miracles? (pink pages)
10.23 Brother's Keeper (production draft)
11.20 Don't Call Me Shurley (production draft)
13.04 The Big Empty (blue draft; missing Act 5)
13.06 Tombstone (blue pages only)
13.08 The Scorpion & the Frog (production draft)
13.10 Wayward Sisters (2nd writer’s draft)
13.19 Funeralia (studio/network draft)
13.21 Beat the Devil (studio/network draft)
14.13 Lebanon (yellow draft, green pages)
14.14 Ouroboros (blue draft)
14.17 Game Night (studio/network draft)
SPN Storyboards:
3.05 Bedtime Stories (Scenes 1-4)
9.03 I'm No Angel (Scenes 1-37)
11.11 Into the Mystic (Scenes 1-5; 37)
#i can see how many hits each item has#clearly folks don't know these things exist#supernatural#scripts#casting sides#storyboards#long post
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Emmy Nominations By Program:
Watchmen - 26
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - 20
Ozark - 18
Succession - 18
The Mandalorian - 15
SNL - 15
Schitts Creek - 15
The Crown - 13
Here’s the full list:
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Better Call Saul
The Crown
The Handmaid’s Tale
Killing Eve
The Mandalorian
Ozark
Stranger Things
Succession
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Dead To Me
The Good Place
Insecure
The Kominsky Method
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Schitt’s Creek
What We Do In The Shadows
Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series
Black Monday
Showtime • Sony Pictures Television, Point Grey Pictures, Shark vs. Bear, After Alaska
Don Cheadle as Mo Monroe
black-ish
ABC • ABC Studios
Anthony Anderson as Andre “Dre” Johnson Sr.
The Good Place
NBC • Universal Television in association with Fremulon and 3 Arts Entertainment
Ted Danson as Michael
The Kominsky Method
Netflix • A Warner Bros. Television Production Michael Douglas as Sandy Kominsky
Ramy
Hulu • A24 Television
Ramy Youssef as Ramy
Schitt’s Creek
Pop TV • Not A Real Company Productions, Inc.
Eugene Levy as Johnny Rose
Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series
The Morning Show
Apple TV+ • Media Res
Steve Carell as Mitch Kessler
Ozark
Netflix • Media Rights Capital
Jason Bateman as Martin ‘Marty’ Byrde
Pose
FX Networks • Fox21 Television Studios and FX Productions
Billy Porter as Pray Tell
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Brian Cox as Logan Roy
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy
This Is Us
NBC • 20th Century Fox Television
Sterling K. Brown as Randall Pearson
Outstanding Lead Actor In A Limited Series Or Movie
Bad Education
HBO • HBO Films in association with Automatik, Sight Unseen and Slater Hall Productions
Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone
Hollywood
Netflix • Netflix
Jeremy Pope as Archie Coleman
I Know This Much Is True
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Willi Hill Productions and FilmNation Entertainment
Mark Ruffalo as Dominick Birdsey/Thomas Birdsey
Normal People
Hulu • Hulu Originals in association with BBC
Paul Mescal as Connell
Watchmen
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with White Rabbit, Paramount Television, Warner Bros. Television & DC Comics
Jeremy Irons as Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias
Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series
black-ish
ABC • ABC Studios
Tracee Ellis Ross as Rainbow Johnson
Dead To Me
Netflix • CBS Television Studios
Christina Applegate as Jen Harding
Dead To Me
Netflix • CBS Television Studios
Linda Cardellini as Judy Hale
Insecure
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Issa Rae Productions, Penny for Your Thoughts Entertainment and 3 Arts Entertainment
Issa Rae as Issa
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel
Schitt’s Creek
Pop TV • Not A Real Company Productions, Inc.
Catherine O’Hara as Moira Rose
Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series
The Crown
Netflix • Left Bank Pictures in association with Sony Pictures Television
Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II
Euphoria
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Reasonable Bunch, A24, Little Lamb, Dreamcrew, ADD Content Agency | HOT | TCDY Productions
Zendaya as Rue
Killing Eve
BBC America • Sid Gentle Films Ltd.
Jodie Comer as Villanelle
Killing Eve
BBC America • Sid Gentle Films Ltd.
Sandra Oh as Eve Polast ri
The Morning Show
Apple TV+ • Media Res
Jennifer Aniston as Alex Levy
Ozark
Netflix • Media Rights Capital
Laura Linney as Wendy Byrde
Outstanding Lead Actress In A Limited Series Or Movie
Little Fires Everywhere
Hulu • ABC Signature Studios / Hello Sunshine
Kerry Washington as Mia Warren
Mrs. America
FX Networks • FX Productions
Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly
Self Made: Inspired By The Life Of Madam C.J. Walker
Netflix • SpringHill Entertainment and Wonder Street in association with Warner Bros. Television
Octavia Spencer as Madam C.J. Walker
Unorthodox
Netflix • Studio Airlift and RealFilm
Shira Haas as Esther Shapiro
Watchmen
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with White Rabbit, Paramount Television, Warner Dros. Television & DC Comics
Regina King as Angela Abar / Sister Night
Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
NBC • Universal Television in association with Fremulon, Dr. Goor Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment
Andre Braugher as Captain Raymond Holt
The Good Place
NBC • Universal Television in association with Fremulon and 3 Arts Entertainment
William Jackson Harper as Chidi Anagonye
The Kominsky Method
Netflix • A Warner Bros. Television Production
Alan Arkin as Norman Newlander
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Sterling K. Brown as Reggie
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weissman
Ramy
Hulu • A24 Television Mahershala Ali as Sheikh Malik
Saturday Night Live
NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Kenan Thompson as Various Characters
Schitt’s Creek
Pop TV • Not A Real Company Productions, Inc.
Daniel Levy as David Rose
Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series
Better Call Saul
AMC • High Bridge, Crystal Diner, Gran Via Productions and Sony Pictures Television Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring
The Handmaid’s Tale
Hulu • MGM, Daniel Wilson Productions, The Littlefield Company, White Oak Pictures
Bradley Whitford as Commander Joseph Lawrence
The Morning Show
Apple TV+ • Media Res
Billy Crudup as Cory Ellison
The Morning Show
Apple TV+ • Media Res
Mark Duplass as Charles ‘Chip’ Black
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Nicholas Braun as Greg Hirsch
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgans
Westworld • HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television
Jeffrey Wright as Bernard
Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Limited Series Or Movie
Hollywood
Netflix • Netflix
Dylan McDermott as Ernie
Hollywood
Netflix • Netflix
Jim Parsons as Henry Willson
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. The Reverend
Netflix • Universal Television in association with 3 Arts Entertainment, Little Stranger, Inc. and Bevel Gears
Tituss Burgess as Titus Andromedon
Watchmen
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with White Rabbit, Paramount Television, Warner Bros. Television & DC Comics
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Cal Abar / Dr. Manhattan
Watchmen
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with White Rabbit, Paramount Television, Warner Bros. Television & DC Comics
Jovan Adepo as Officer Will Reeves / Hooded Justice
Watchmen
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with White Rabbit, Paramount Television, Warner Bros. Television & DC Comics
Louis Gossett Jr. as William Reeves
Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series
GLOW
Netflix • Tilted Productions
Betty Gilpin as Debbie Eagan
The Good Place
NBC • Universal Television in association with Fremulon and 3 Arts Entertainment
D’Arcy Carden as Janet
Insecure
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Issa Rae Productions, Penny for Your Thoughts Entertainment and 3 Arts Entertainment
Yvonne Orji as Molly
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Marin Hinkle as Rose Weissman
Saturday Night Live
NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Kate McKinnon as Various Characters
Saturday Night Live
NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Cecily Strong as Various Characters
Schitt’s Creek
Pop TV • Not A Real Company Productions, Inc.
Annie Murphy as Alexis Rose
Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series
Big Little Lies
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Blossom Films, Hello Sunshine, David E. Kelley Productions and crazyrose Productions
Laura Dern as Renata Klein
Big Little Lies
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Blossom Films, Hello Sunshine, David E. Kelley Productions and crazyrose Productions
Meryl Streep as Mary Louise Wright
The Crown
Netflix • Left Bank Pictures in association with Sony Pictures Television
Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret
The Handmaid’s Tale • Hulu • MGM, Daniel Wilson Productions, The Littlefield Company, White Oak Pictures
Samira Wiley as Moira
Killing Eve
BBC America • Sid Gentle Films Ltd.
Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens
Ozark
Netflix • Media Rights Capital
Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore
Succession
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries and Gary Sanchez Productions
Sarah Snook as Shiv Roy
Westworld
HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Kilter Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television
Thandie Newton as Maeve
[... more via link above]
#the crown#watchmen#the marvelous mrs. maisel#ozark#succession#the mandolarian#schitt's creek#emmys 2020
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L.A.’S FINEST (rejected at NBC, being shopped around; fka “Bad Girls”)
** This series has now been picked up by Charter Communications for their “Spectrum” platform in the U.S.A. and Bell Media in Canada **
Free-spirited former DEA agent Burnett has a fresh start in her new job as an LAPD detective. She’s partnered with Nancy McKenna, a working mom who can’t help but look at Syd’s freedom with some grass-is-greener envy. These two have totally different lifestyles and approaches, but they both are at the top of their fields…
Cast (thus far)
Gabrielle Union (Being Mary Jane) as Special Agent Sydney “Syd” Burnett, introduced in the film “Bad Boys II,” is an undercover operative with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Jessica Alba (Dark Angel) as Nancy McKenna, who joined the Army out of high school and spent most of the 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women weren’t allowed in combat, so she joined the military police to get closer to the action. McKenna is now a detective raising two preteen stepkids with her husband. (Mar 2)
Ernie Hudson (Grace & Frankie) as Joseph Burnett, Syd’s father. (Jan 29)
Ryan McPartlin (Chuck) as Dr. Patrick McKenna, Nancy’s husband. Formerly an Army medic, he is now a successful ER trauma doctor in Beverly Hills. (Mar 15)
Sophie Reynolds (Gamer’s Guide to Pretty Much Everything) as Isabel, Patrick’s rebellious, angsty, and eager to grow up teenage daughter who has a complicated relationship with her step-mom Nancy. Defiant and sometimes snarky, Izzy is a bright, curious, caring young woman who bonds with Nancy’s partner on the force, Syd. (Sep 25)
presumably played by Orli Gottesman (Cattle Call) in the unaired pilot, although this was unconfirmed
Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights) as LAPD homicide detective Ben Walker, a smart man with a smarter mouth who comes from money. (Feb 15)
Duane Martin (All of Us) as the smart and competitive LAPD homicide detective Ben Baines, who’s partnered with Ben Walker, and they’re both referred to as “the Bens.” (Feb 15)
Zach McGowan (Black Sails) as Ray Sherman — who has a violent encounter with Syd while she’s looking for a criminal he is apparently in business with. He is a slick-suited hustler who runs a nightclub. (Mar 26)
Barry Sloane (Six) in a recurring role as Dante Sherman, the younger brother of bad guy Ray, with whom he shares a criminal past. Although he is an ex-con trying to turn things around, his big brother keeps getting the two of them mixed up with some dangerous criminals, pulling Dante back into his old, illicit life. (Sep 14)
Genre: Action Drama
Created by: Brandon Margolis & Brandon Sonnier. Based on: Bad Boys movies. Directed by: Anton Cropper.
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer, Doug Belgrad, Gabrielle Union, Jeff Gaspin, Jonathan Littman and KristieAnne Reed, Jeff Morrone, Brandon Margolis & Brandon Sonnier.
Studios: Sony Pictures Television, Jerry Bruckheimer, 2.0 Entertainment & Primary Wave.
Season Zero Pilot Preview (beware of spoilers)
#L.A.'s Finest#Bad Girls#NBC Pilots#Genre: Drama#Genre: Action Drama#Bad Boys#Gabrielle Union#Jessica Alba#Ernie Hudson#Ryan McPartlin#Zach Gilford#Duane Martin#beingshoppedaround#pickeduptoseries#pickeduptoserieselsewhere#Zach McGowan#Barry Sloane#Sophie Reynolds
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72nd Primetime Emmy Awards announced…
The 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards announced the best in U.S. prime time television programming between June 1, 2019 – May 31, 2020, as chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
The show was originally to be held at Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, but the COVID-19 pandemic reasons, it was instead held at the Staples Center, while winners gave speeches by webcam from their homes.
The ceremony was held on September 20, 2020, and broadcast in the U.S. by ABC. It was preceded by the 72nd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards on September 14, 15, 16, 17, and 19. The ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
The nominations were announced on July 28, 2020, by Leslie Jones, Laverne Cox, Josh Gad, and Tatiana Maslany. Watchmen led the nominations with eleven, followed by Succession with ten and Ozark with nine.
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Here is the nominees and awards;
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Outstanding Comedy Series
Schitt’s Creek (Pop TV) – winner
Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO)
Dead to Me (Netflix)
The Good Place (NBC)
Insecure (HBO)
The Kominsky Method (Netflix)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Prime Video)
What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
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Outstanding Drama Series
Succession (HBO) – winner
Better Call Saul (AMC)
The Crown (Netflix)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
Killing Eve (BBC America)
The Mandalorian (Disney+)
Ozark (Netflix)
Stranger Things (Netflix)
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Outstanding Limited Series
Watchmen (HBO) – winner
Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu)
Mrs. America (FX)
Unbelievable (Netflix)
Unorthodox (Netflix)
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Outstanding Variety Talk Series
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – winner
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Comedy Central)
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS)
Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC)
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)
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Outstanding Competition Program
RuPaul’s Drag Race (VH1) – winner
The Masked Singer (Fox)
Nailed It! (Netflix)
Top Chef (Bravo)
The Voice (NBC)
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Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Eugene Levy as Johnny Rose on Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “The Pitch”) (Pop TV) – winner
Anthony Anderson as Andre “Dre” Johnson, Sr. on Black-ish (Episode: “Love, Boat”) (ABC)
Don Cheadle as Maurice “Mo” Monroe on Black Monday (Episode: “Who Are You Supposed to Be?”) (Showtime)
Ted Danson as Michael on The Good Place (Episode: “Whenever You’re Ready”) (NBC)
Michael Douglas as Sandy Kominsky on The Kominsky Method (Episode: “Chapter 12: A Libido Sits in the Fridge”) (Netflix)
Ramy Youssef as Ramy Hassan on Ramy (Episode: “You Are Naked in Front of Your Sheikh”) (Hulu)
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Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series
Catherine O’Hara as Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “The Incident”) (Pop TV) – winner
Christina Applegate as Jen Harding on Dead to Me (Episode: “It’s Not You, It’s Me”) (Netflix)
Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam “Midge” Maisel on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “A Jewish Girl Walks Into the Apollo…”) (Prime Video)
Linda Cardellini as Judy Hale on Dead to Me (Episode: “If Only You Knew”) (Netflix)
Issa Rae as Issa Dee on Insecure (Episode: “Lowkey Happy”) (HBO)
Tracee Ellis Ross as Dr. Rainbow “Bow” Johnson on Black-ish (Episode: “Kid Life Crisis”) (ABC)
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Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy on Succession (Episode: “This Is Not for Tears”) (HBO) – winner
Jason Bateman as Martin “Marty” Byrde on Ozark (Episode: “Su Casa Es Mi Casa”) (Netflix)
Sterling K. Brown as Randall Pearson on This Is Us (Episode: “After the Fire”) (NBC)
Steve Carell as Mitch Kessler on The Morning Show (Episode: “Lonely at the Top”) (Apple TV+)
Brian Cox as Logan Roy on Succession (Episode: “Hunting”) (HBO)
Billy Porter as Pray Tell on Pose (Episode: “Love’s in Need of Love Today”) (FX)
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Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series
Zendaya as Rue Bennett on Euphoria (Episode: “Made You Look”) (HBO) – winner
Jennifer Aniston as Alex Levy on The Morning Show (Episode: “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning”) (Apple TV+)
Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II on The Crown (Episode: “Cri de Coeur”) (Netflix)
Jodie Comer as Oksana Astankova / Villanelle on Killing Eve (Episode: “Are You From Pinner?”) (BBC America)
Laura Linney as Wendy Byrde on Ozark (Episode: “Fire Pink”) (Netflix)
Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri on Killing Eve (Episode: “Are You Leading or Am I?”) (BBC America)
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Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
Mark Ruffalo as Dominick and Thomas Birdsey on I Know This Much Is True (HBO) – winner
Jeremy Irons as Adrian Veidt on Watchmen (HBO)
Hugh Jackman as Dr. Frank Tassone on Bad Education (HBO)
Paul Mescal as Connell Waldron on Normal People (Hulu)
Jeremy Pope as Archie Coleman on Hollywood (Netflix)
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Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie
Regina King as Angela Abar / Sister Night on Watchmen (HBO) – winner
Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly on Mrs. America (FX)
Shira Haas as Esther “Esty” Shapiro on Unorthodox (Netflix)
Octavia Spencer as Madam C. J. Walker on Self Made (Netflix)
Kerry Washington as Mia Warren on Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu)
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Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series
Dan Levy as David Rose on Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “Happy Ending”) (Pop TV) – winner
Mahershala Ali as Sheikh Ali Malik on Ramy (Episode: “Little Omar”) (Hulu)
Alan Arkin as Norman Newlander on The Kominsky Method (Episode: “Chapter 14: A Secret Leaks, a Teacher Speaks”) (Netflix)
Andre Braugher as Captain Ray Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Episode: “Ransom”) (NBC)
Sterling K. Brown as Reggie on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “Panty Pose”) (Prime Video)
William Jackson Harper as Chidi Anagonye on The Good Place (Episode: “Whenever You’re Ready”) (NBC)
Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weissman on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “Marvelous Radio”) (Prime Video)
Kenan Thompson as Various Characters on Saturday Night Live (Episode: “At Home #2”) (NBC)
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Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Annie Murphy as Alexis Rose on Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “The Presidential Suite”) (Pop TV) – winner
Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “Marvelous Radio”) (Prime Video)
D’Arcy Carden as Janet on The Good Place (Episode: “You’ve Changed, Man”) (NBC)
Betty Gilpin as Debbie “Liberty Bell” Eagan on GLOW (Episode: “A Very GLOW Christmas”) (Netflix)
Marin Hinkle as Rose Weissman on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “A Jewish Girl Walks Into the Apollo…”) (Prime Video)
Kate McKinnon as Various Characters on Saturday Night Live (Episode: “Host: Daniel Craig”) (NBC)
Yvonne Orji as Molly Carter on Insecure (Episode: “Lowkey Lost”) (HBO)
Cecily Strong as Various Characters on Saturday Night Live (Episode: “Host: Eddie Murphy”) (NBC)
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Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series
Billy Crudup as Cory Ellison on The Morning Show (Episode: “Chaos Is the New Cocaine”) (Apple TV+) – winner
Nicholas Braun as Greg Hirsch on Succession (Episode: “This Is Not for Tears”) (HBO)
Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy on Succession (Episode: “Tern Haven”) (HBO)
Mark Duplass as Charlie “Chip” Black on The Morning Show (Episode: “The Interview”) (Apple TV+)
Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring on Better Call Saul (Episode: “JMM”) (AMC)
Matthew Macfadyen as Tom Wambsgans on Succession (Episode: “This Is Not for Tears”) (HBO)
Bradley Whitford as Commander Joseph Lawrence on The Handmaid’s Tale (Episode: “Sacrifice”) (Hulu)
Jeffrey Wright as Bernard Lowe on Westworld (Episode: “Crisis Theory”) (HBO)
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Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series
Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore on Ozark (Episode: “In Case of Emergency”) (Netflix) – winner
Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret on The Crown (Episode: “Cri de Coeur”) (Netflix)
Laura Dern as Renata Klein on Big Little Lies (Episode: “Tell-Tale Hearts”) (HBO)
Thandie Newton as Maeve Millay on Westworld (Episode: “The Winter Line”) (HBO)
Fiona Shaw as Carolyn Martens on Killing Eve (Episode: “Management Sucks”) (BBC America)
Sarah Snook as Siobhan “Shiv” Roy on Succession (Episode: “The Summer Palace”) (HBO)
Meryl Streep as Mary Louise Wright on Big Little Lies (Episode: “I Want to Know”) (HBO)
Samira Wiley as Moira Strand on The Handmaid’s Tale (Episode: “Sacrifice”) (Hulu)
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Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Calvin “Cal” Abar on Watchmen (Episode: “A God Walks into Abar”) (HBO) – winner
Jovan Adepo as Young Will Reeves on Watchmen (Episode: “This Extraordinary Being”) (HBO)
Tituss Burgess as Titus Andromedon on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. The Reverend (Netflix)
Louis Gossett Jr. as Will Reeves on Watchmen (Episode: “See How They Fly”) (HBO)
Dylan McDermott as Ernest “Ernie” West on Hollywood (Episode: “Meg”) (Netflix)
Jim Parsons as Henry Willson on Hollywood (Episode: “Outlaws”) (Netflix)
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Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie
Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm on Mrs. America (Episode: “Shirley”) (FX) – winner
Toni Collette as Det. Grace Rasmussen on Unbelievable (Episode: “Episode 6”) (Netflix)
Margo Martindale as Bella Abzug on Mrs. America (Episode: “Bella”) (FX)
Jean Smart as Laurie Blake on Watchmen (Episode: “She Was Killed by Space Junk”) (HBO)
Holland Taylor as Ellen Kincaid on Hollywood (Episode: “Jump”) (Netflix)
Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan on Mrs. America (Episode: “Betty”) (FX)
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Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series
Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “Happy Ending”), Directed by Andrew Cividino and Dan Levy (CBC / Pop TV) – winner
The Great (Episode: “The Great”), Directed by Matt Shakman (Hulu)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “It’s Comedy or Cabbage”), Directed by Amy Sherman-Palladino (Prime Video)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Episode: “Marvelous Radio”), Directed by Daniel Palladino (Prime Video)
Modern Family (Episode: “Finale, Part 2”), Directed by Gail Mancuso (ABC)
Ramy (Episode: “Miakhalifa.mov”), Directed by Ramy Youssef (Hulu)
Will & Grace (Episode: “We Love Lucy”), Directed by James Burrows (NBC)
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Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
Succession (Episode: “Hunting”), Directed by Andrij Parekh (HBO) – winner
The Crown (Episode: “Aberfan”), Directed by Benjamin Caron (Netflix)
The Crown (Episode: “Cri de Coeur”), Directed by Jessica Hobbs (Netflix)
Homeland (Episode: “Prisoners of War”), Directed by Lesli Linka Glatter (Showtime)
The Morning Show (Episode: “The Interview”), Directed by Mimi Leder (Apple TV+)
Ozark (Episode: “Fire Pink”), Directed by Alik Sakharov (Netflix)
Ozark (Episode: “Su Casa Es Mi Casa”), Directed by Ben Semanoff (Netflix)
Succession (Episode: “This Is Not for Tears”), Directed by Mark Mylod (HBO)
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Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special
Unorthodox, Directed by Maria Schrader (Netflix) – winner
Little Fires Everywhere (Episode: “Find a Way”), Directed by Lynn Shelton (Hulu)
Normal People (Episode: “Episode 5”), Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Hulu)
Watchmen (Episode: “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice”), Directed by Nicole Kassell (HBO)
Watchmen (Episode: “Little Fear of Lightning”), Directed by Steph Green (HBO)
Watchmen (Episode: “This Extraordinary Being”), Directed by Stephen Williams (HBO)
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Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series
Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “Happy Ending”), Written by Dan Levy (CBC / Pop TV) – winner
The Good Place (Episode: “Whenever You’re Ready”), Written by Michael Schur (NBC)
The Great (Episode: “The Great”), Written by Tony McNamara (Hulu)
Schitt’s Creek (Episode: “The Presidential Suite”), Written by David West Read (CBC / Pop TV)
What We Do in the Shadows (Episode: “Collaboration”), Written by Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil (FX)
What We Do in the Shadows (Episode: “Ghosts”), Written by Paul Simms (FX)
What We Do in the Shadows (Episode: “On the Run”), Written by Stefani Robinson (FX)
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Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
Succession (Episode: “This Is Not for Tears”), Written by Jesse Armstrong (HBO) – winner
Better Call Saul (Episode: “Bad Choice Road”), Written by Thomas Schnauz (AMC)
Better Call Saul (Episode: “Bagman”), Written by Gordon Smith (AMC)
The Crown (Episode: “Aberfan”), Written by Peter Morgan (Netflix)
Ozark (Episode: “All In”), Written by Chris Mundy (Netflix)
Ozark (Episode: “Boss Fight”), Written by John Shiban (Netflix)
Ozark (Episode: “Fire Pink”), Written by Miki Johnson (Netflix)
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Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special
Watchmen (Episode: “This Extraordinary Being”), Written by Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson (HBO) – winner
Mrs. America (Episode: “Shirley”), Written by Tanya Barfield (FX)
Normal People (Episode: “Episode 3”), Written by Sally Rooney and Alice Birch (Hulu)
Unbelievable (Episode: “Episode 1”), Written by Susannah Grant, Michael Chabon, and Ayelet Waldman (Netflix)
Unorthodox (Episode: “Part 1”), Written by Anna Winger (Netflix)
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The 4th Annual Roger Neal Style Hollywood Oscar Viewing Dinner and After Party will once again honor stars with the ICON AWARD during the pre-show to the Academy awards. This year's honorees include: For Television, Bernie Kopell (Love Boat), Michael Learned (The Waltons), and Loretta Swit (M*A*S*H). The Music Icon Award: Frank Stallone (Stayin' Alive). Motion Pictures Icon Award: Robert Forster, Margaret Avery, Ernie Hudson, and Lainie Kazan. Woman in Philanthropy Icon award goes to actress / philanthropist Kira Reed Lorsch (The Bay). Celebrities expected: Ilya Salkind (Superman), Joe Cortese (The Green Book), BarBara Luna (Star Trek), Lou Ferrigno Jr. (SWAT), Cory Oliver, Lydia Cornell (Too Close for Comfort), Brigitte Nielsen (Red Sonja), Sofia Milos (CSI Miami), Dawn Wells (Gilligan's Island), Lorenzo Lamas (Falcon Crest/Renegade), Dee Wallace (ET), Mary Wilson (The Supremes), Cory Feldman (Stand By Me), Courtney Stodden (Celebrity Big Brother), Nic Novicki (Sopranos), Teale Sperling (Toy Box), Kate Linder (The Young & The Restless), Kami Kotler, Judy Tenuta (HBO Specials), Ieva Georges (No Way Out 15'), Kelly Lang (KNBC anchor), Katherine Pacino, James Jurdi (Reaper), Noreen Taylor (The Bay), Patrika Darbo (Days Our Lives), Meredith Thomas, Miles Tagtmeyer (Broken), Stanley Livingston (My Three Sons), Suzanne Marques (Enlightened, HBO), Donna Spangler (Beverly Hills Christmas), Patty McCormack(The Bad Seed Oscar nom), Gabrielle Stone(Speak No Evil), Tanya Banks(Little Women), Ivan Modei, Rebecca Holden (Knightrider), Joel Diamond (Grammy Record Producer, Engelbert Humperdinck), Robert Mack(Host Good Morning LaLa Land), Dr. Paul Nassif (E!'s Botched), Danny Arroyo (Sangre Negra), Clarence Gilyard (Walker Texas Ranger), Brenda Dickson (The Young and The Restless), Kathy Garver (Family Affair), Joann Worley (Laugh-In), Ava Cantrell (Haunted Hathaways, Nickelodeon), Melody Anderson (Flash Gordon, Firewalker), Carrie Schroder (I Am Frankie, Nickelodeon), Petri Byrd (What's Up Orange County), Renee Lawless (Tyler Perry's Have and Have Nots), Sonika Vaid, James Dumont (Law & Order: True Crime), Palliadium, Hollywood. By#filmosfera https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSHOZjnrw6/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1qchp4eg77mqk
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HBO Oz 20th Anniversary Oral History
(GIF: HBO)
In today’s Peak TV landscape, television creators have a multitude of content-hungry outlets eager to attract an audience for their wares: Streaming services and premium cable compete alongside basic cable and network television, while viral video-generating Internet hot spots like YouTube and Funny or Die are cranking out original programming as well.
It’s a brave new world, one that began to take shape 20 years ago on July 12, 1997. That’s the date that Tom Fontana’s sprawling prison drama, Oz, premiered on HBO, setting a channel best known for replaying movies and the occasional cult comedy series like The Larry Sanders Show on a course to becoming a dramatic powerhouse that lived up to its famous tagline: “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.”
And Oz was the kind of bold, provocative experiment that only could have aired on a restrictions-free cable network looking to shake up its image. Set in Emerald City, an experimental incarceration unit inside the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility, the show offered an addictive fusion of gritty prison drama, dark comedy, graphic violence, and even a touch of soap opera romance. Oz‘s serialized storytelling and ensemble cast — J.K. Simmons, Eamonn Walker and Dean Winters were just some of the future stars who passed through Emerald City’s glass cells — attracted the attention of critics, as well as those within the industry. Two years after Oz premiered, HBO debuted a new show from David Chase called The Sopranos, and the rest is Peak TV history.
To commemorate the prison drama’s milestone anniversary, Yahoo TV talked with 13 key players in Oz‘s groundbreaking premiere and eight-episode first season. (Sorry, Keller and Beecher ‘shippers, that means no Chris Meloni, who joined in Season 2.) Read on to discover which famous hip-hop star played the role of narrator Augustus Hill before Harold Perrineau, how Simon Adebisi acquired his name (and famous hat) and the unsung heroine behind both Oz and the premium cable boom.
The Participants (In Alphabetical Order)
Kirk Acevedo (Miguel Alvarez)
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Simon Adebisi)
Chris Albrecht (CEO of Starz; Former CEO of HBO)
Jean de Segonzac (Director of Photography; Director)
Tom Fontana (Creator/Showrunner)
Ernie Hudson (Warden Leo Glynn)
Terry Kinney (Tim McManus)
Darnell Martin (Director)
Tim McAdams (Johnny Post)
Jon Seda (Dino Ortolani)
Lee Tergesen (Tobias Beecher)
Dean Winters (Ryan O’Reily)
Luna Lauren Velez (Gloria Nathan)
‘Oz’ creator Tom Fontana (Photo: Getty Images)
Chapter One: The Wonderful Wizards of Oz
Tom Fontana never set out to be a premium cable pioneer. The Buffalo-born writer was a creature of network television, getting his start as a writer and producer on the beloved NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere, before collaborating with Barry Levinson and Paul Attanasio on NBC’s acclaimed police series Homicide: Life on the Street. It was during the making of Homicide that Fontana found himself contemplating what happens to criminals after they entered the penal system. That germ of an idea eventually grew into Oz, which he developed in collaboration with Levinson. As Fontana quickly discovered, his show never stood a chance at making it onto a broadcast network.
Tom Fontana: I grew up watching cop shows where at end of the episode the bad guy traditionally got arrested and went to prison while the cops sat around in the last scene and did a funny little joke. Then we all went to bed feeling [satisfied]. While I was doing Homicide — where the bad guy didn’t always get arrested — I thought, “Maybe the more interesting story is what happens to these people when they go to prison.” In David Simon’s non-fiction book [that inspired Homicide] there’s a section about a prison riot in Baltimore, and I decided to expand on it for an episode, [Season 5’s “Prison Riot”] and bring back some of the murderers we had seen in previous seasons. That was my first swing at seeing what writing a prison show might be like.
While developing Oz, I spent about two years going to prisons all over the country, and I saw that there were two kinds — these old Gothic horror chambers, and new, experimental prisons. But there was never a place where the two were together, and it was important to me that you had the old and the new butting up against each other. When I talked to prisoners who were in places like Emerald City, they were very clear that it was worse for them because they had no privacy. I found that very moving, and so that’s where Emerald City came from, and the idea of glass so that everybody could see everybody else at any given moment.
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Back then there were only four networks, and none of them were the least bit interested in my version of a prison show. I sort of pathetically adapted it as I got each rejection. I can’t remember which network I pitched which version to, but one of them was set in a juvenile detention center, and another was a Club Fed, where it was rich white collar guys who been sent up the river. Once I really started to examine what I wanted to do, I went back to the idea of that Homicide episode, which was a down-and-dirty prison with all sorts of crazy characters.
I was lucky that Chris Albrecht at HBO was looking to start doing original material. At that time, HBO had a comedy side — they had Dream On and a few other comedy shows — but they hadn’t really had a drama side yet. Chris had the vision to say, “We need to expand the reach of our network.” He told me that the [network] had had success with prison documentaries, so he had an instinct that a prison show might appeal to his subscribers. He said, “I’ll give you a little bit of money to shoot a presentation, about 15 to 20 minutes, and let’s see what it looks like.”
Chris Albrecht: The show had been in development for quite a while before we were really even contemplating doing a lot of original programming. There was a change in management, and we wanted to ramp up our originals. We hadn’t ever done an hour-long drama before. I went to Tom and said, “Look, we’ve put you and Barry [Levinson] through the ringer here. I’m not going to ask you to make any more changes, but we need to shoot something, so, here’s a million dollars. Shoot as much of this as you can.”
Fontana: I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will — it wasn’t enough money! We shot it in Baltimore while we were shooting Homicide, so we would book a location and I would say, “Okay, we’ll shoot the Homicide scene here, and then we’ll shoot the Oz scene.” So, in a way, NBC paid for it a little bit, if you know what I’m saying.
Darnell Martin: I had directed a feature, [1994’s I Like it Like That], but Homicide was my first television experience. They gave me the script for “Sniper: Part 2,” and it was written like a film, with helicopter shots and blockaded streets. I kept trying to figure out how to do that for the budget and time that we had. Maybe that was a seller for Tom. He asked me to direct the Oz presentation.
Fontana: The cast of [the presentation] was different. Jon Seda and Terry Kinney were in it, but the part that Lauren Velez [now Luna Lauren Velez] played, Dr. Gloria Nathan, was played by Jennifer Grey. The reason I later made the change was I really felt like the cast was [too] white, and I also liked the idea of a Latina woman in the midst of all these men. And there was a different guy playing Augustus Hill than Harold Perrineau.
Martin: I cast Mos Def as Augustus. He was amazing. Amazing. He was recast. It was crazy! I begged and I fought — not with Tom. It was above Tom; Tom couldn’t change it. Harold is wonderful, but you know, Mos Def had something really special.
Harold Perrineau as Augustus Hill ‘Oz.’ The role was played by Mos Def in the original presentation (Credit: HBO)
Terry Kinney: Tom had cast me in a Homicide episode, [Season 4’s “Map of the Heart”] and he said that he’d always wanted to make up for that, because it was an indecipherable episode. I played an NSA mapping guy, and to this day don’t know what it was about! I remember meeting Tom and Darnell for the Oz presentation, and they were talking about a character that was a die-hard liberal in a way that seemed extremely naïve. I basically played the warden, whose name was still McManus.
Jon Seda: I worked with Darnell on I Like It Like That, and she raised the bar for me. I told her that anything she ever does, I’m going to say yes to it. Sure enough, they said, “Hey, listen, there’s a script that’s called Oz. It’s a presentation. Darnell Martin’s directing.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I didn’t even know what the role was. What a lot of people don’t know is that at the same time that I was shooting that, I was also shooting the movie Selena. So when I met with Darnell, I said, “You’re going to have to help me, because I’ve been living as this sweet guy Chris Pérez for a couple months already, and now I have to play this ruthless Dino Ortolani.” I didn’t know how I could do it, but she said, “Just trust me. Put everything in my hands and it’s going to be great.”
Jon Seda in ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Tim McAdams: I had built a pretty strong relationship with Pat Moran, who was the local casting agent for Homicide. When they decided to do the presentation for Oz, I auditioned and got cast. Nobody knew what Oz was or really thought anything of it; I just knew it was a show I got hired for and I was a young actor trying to work. We shot this presentation, and Mos Def and Jennifer Grey were in it, so I was like, “Wow! We got some names in this thing, and maybe it’s gonna get some traction!” I was honored to work with Jennifer Grey; I remember how excited I was and how friendly she was. And growing up in that era, having a chance to spend time around Mos Def and watch him transition to becoming an actor was really exciting. Sometime later I got a phone call about the show being picked up by HBO, and they said, “They’re gonna be doing a lot of recasting, but they’re going to allow you to play Johnny Post.”
Fontana: That initial presentation was more tonal; it was a real attempt to say, “This is the kind of subject matter we’re going to cover, and these are the kinds of characters we’re going to see.” You have to remember, this was before we built the Emerald City set, so it was all hallways and rooms, but it wasn’t what the show eventually looked like. Though, if you watch the first episode of Oz, there are a couple scenes that are from the original presentation, like the shower scene where Seda gets the s**t beat out of him by the COs. And I think the hospital scenes are from the original presentation.
Ernie Hudson as Warden Leo Glynn and Terry Kinney as Tim McManus on ‘Oz.’ In the pilot presentation, Kinney played the warden. (Credit: HBO)
Kinney: Jon Seda and I were two of the survivors of that 15-minute presentation. I didn’t think that I was going to make it to the series. I remember that I was in Los Angeles doing something else, and I called Tom and he said, “You know what, you’re my guy. Let me work this out.” What I think they’d done is they wanted the warden to be African-American. They wanted Ernie [Hudson], and they had a relationship with him. So Tom made me the keeper of the Emerald City section of the prison. I was grateful [for] his loyalty.
Albrecht: At the end of the presentation, the lead guy, Dino, gets killed in his cell. I said to Tom, “He comes back next episode, right?” And they said, “No, he’s dead.” I go, “What do you mean, he’s dead? He’s the lead in the show!” They go, “That’s what’s happening here.” That’s when I realized that they were gonna change the rules.
Seda: What’s funny is that I remember that the death scene wasn’t supposed to carry over [to the pilot]. I was expected to come on and be a regular on the show. I think what happened was that HBO just really loved the idea of the lead guy actually dying. That kind of set off the trend on Oz.
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Fontana: We got an eight-episode order. I was literally yelled at by friends of mine and peers of mine on the drama side of television. They said to me, “Why are you going to work over at HBO? It’s a movie channel. Nobody watches it.” And I said, “Well, who cares if nobody watches it? They’re going to let me make the show I want to make.” Literally people thought it would kill my career, that I made the wrong tactical move and that I should be doing Touched by an Angel! I’d like to tell you that I’m the visionary who had this incredible sense that cable would someday dominate the television world, but it wasn’t that. It was simply that there was an open door and I went through it.
Chapter Two: Populating Emerald City
Having walked through that open door, Fontana’s next task was assembling his prison population. At the time, and still today, Oz stands as a model og diverse casting; it’s large ensemble encompasses a multitude of races, religions and sexual orientations. And shooting in New York, Fontana tapped into a deep reservoir of veteran actors and fresh faces.
Fontana: Our feeling about the penal system in America is very cyclical; you go through periods of “[Prison] should be about redemption” and then “[Prison] should be about retribution.” At that time, it was about retribution and there was this sense that prisoners were bad people, and there were no heroes in those stories. The truth is, I wasn’t interested in writing heroes per se. And that was the great thing about Chris. I’ve often quoted him as saying, “I don’t care if the characters are likable as long as they’re interesting.” That was what I needed to hear because I wasn’t planning to make likable characters — I was planning to make interesting characters.
J.K. Simmons in ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Throughout the life of the series, we were able to get some wonderful, brilliant New York theater actors. We’d used J.K. Simmons in an episode of Homicide, so I gave him the part of Vern Schillinger because I knew he could do it. Dean Winters had done Homicide episodes, and was my favorite bartender before that, so I wrote Ryan O’Reilly specifically for him.
Dean Winters: Tom had come up with the idea of Ryan O’Reily by watching me bartend. When I was a bartender, I was a real hustler. My motto was, “If you leave my bar with cab fare, then I failed.” I would try and drain you of every dollar you had. I quit my bartending job and was in Los Angeles doing my first movie, Conspiracy Theory. It was a real leap of faith. Tom came out to visit, and we had a long talk. I told him, “You know, I really don’t think this acting thing is for me, it doesn’t feel right.” And he goes, “Listen: I was doing a little presentation for HBO about a prison, and I think it might turn out well for all of us.”
Dean Winters as Ryan O’Reily on ‘Oz.’ (Credit: HBO)
Ernie Hudson: The first time I heard of Oz was when I got a call from Tom. I did a six-episode arc on St. Elsewhere [in 1984], where Tom was a writer and producer. I got to know him a little bit on set, and when he called me about Oz he said, “Do you remember we talked about working together on a project?” I didn’t remember that conversation, but I pretended that I did. I based Leo loosely on Robert Matthews, the first black warden of Leavenworth prison in Kansas. I read a book where he talked about how father was a minister, and wanted him to go into the ministry. Later on, he said to his father, “This is my ministry.” I thought of it that way. He was a guy who finished college, but probably started at junior college, and went to night school. He’s worked his way up. He’s the guy who loaned money to the friend and never got paid back.
Luna Lauren Velez as Dr. Gloria Nathan on ‘Oz.’ (Credit: HBO)
Luna Lauren Velez: My first film was I Like It Like That, directed by Darnell Martin. She called me and said, “Do you want to do this show, Oz?” And I said, “Well, I’m doing this other show, [the Fox drama New York Undercover].” She said, “It might be a one off, I’m not even sure what’s going to happen with the character,” and then she said, “Jon Seda is doing it.” Jon and I had done I Like It Like That together, so I came onboard and they just kept asking me to come back. My understanding was that Jennifer Grey played Dr. Nathan in the [presentation]; everyone had glowing things to say about her, but said, “We decided to go a different direction.”
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje: I went in and read for the casting director [Alexa L. Fogel]; there were only two lines and I read them in a British accent, an American accent, an African accent and a Jamaican accent just to show what I could do with it. She told me to wait, auditioned a few other people and then closed up shop and took me over to Tom’s office. He was in the middle of writing, and she told me, “Okay, he’s going to give you two minutes.” He didn’t even look up; I performed the lines in those various accents, and he said, “All right, stop. That’s enough.” That was it! He didn’t say I got the part — he didn’t say anything.
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Alexa called me the next day and said, “Tom liked the African character, the Nigerian one. He doesn’t have one of those in the show, and he’d like you to play that.” I was a little bummed, because I wanted to play an American. Then she said, “What he wants to do is he’s going to write it as an American and he wants you to be able to translate it into the African character,” which was freaking great. When I met Tom again, he told me that he had a Nigerian friend he went to college with whose name was Bisi. So he said he would use part of my name and part of his friend’s name: that’s how Adebisi was born.
Fontana: Eamonn Walker was someone I didn’t know until he came into audition, but he was so incredible that it was a foregone conclusion he’d be part of the cast. I was obsessed with getting that character of Kareem Said right. And Eamonn was equally obsessive about getting it right. Some of the extras in his Muslim Brotherhood prisoner group were actual Muslims, so he would go once a week to the mosque, and pray and experience the whole religious side of what it is to be an Imam.
Eamonn Walker as Kareem Said on ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Kirk Acevedo: Originally Tom wrote Miguel Alvarez for someone else, and then I came in and I got the gig. I remember the exact audition: there were five actors ahead of me, and the scene was an emotional scene where you had to go in and scream and yell about some s**t. Every actor who went in before me screamed and yelled, and I was like, “Well, I can’t scream and yell, because no matter how good I can do it you’re gonna get tired of seeing the same fucking thing.” So I played it just the total opposite, and I stood out and got the gig.
Lee Tergesen: I had been doing a show for USA called Weird Science, which had just finished up, and I was working on Homicide for a couple of episodes. I was down in Baltimore and Tom said, “When you’re done, can you come up to New York? I want to talk to you about something that I have in the works.” So I went up and he and I started talking about something that ended up being Oz. We talked about a couple of different ideas he had for parts, one being a guard and the other one being this guy who ends up being in jail as sort of a fish out of water. I was like, “That sounds more interesting than a guard.”
Fontana: Initially HBO didn’t want me to cast Lee as Beecher. I was like, “Well, what’s wrong with him?” And they go, “Oh no, he’s a brilliant actor. It’s just not who we had in our head.” I said, “Well, he’s who I had in my head, because I wrote the part for him. So you’re stuck with him.” And then, of course, they were [ultimately] thrilled with him. But at first they were a little nervous, because he didn’t look like who they thought Beecher should look like. I never understood what that meant.
Albrecht: I do remember talking about that, because Lee was such a prominent character in the beginning. We were kind of new to it all. I had worked pretty closely with Garry Shandling on The Larry Sanders Show and Marta Kaufman and David Crane on Dream On, but this was really the first time that we had this size of a show, and this kind of serialized drama. So I think we were just babbling at Tom and Barry, who obviously had a lot more television experience than we did.
Lee Tergesen as Tobias Beecher on ‘OZ.’ (Credit: HBO)
Tergesen: In retrospect, I know that happened, but Tom didn’t make me aware of it at all in the beginning. But yeah, my understanding now is they [thought]: “This character is so important, and this guy has just being doing Weird Science.” And Tom was like, “Well, don’t worry — you’ll see, you’ll see.” I wonder what they think now!
Fontana: I had met Rita Moreno at a party at Elaine’s that was marking the end of The Cosby Mysteries, which she had been a regular on. I went up to her and said, “It’s such an honor to meet you — I’m such a big fan of your work.” And she went, “Well, if you’re such a big f***ing fan of my work, why didn’t you f***ing write me a part?” I went, “Okay, I will!” So years later, I took her and her husband to dinner and was talking about Oz. She goes, “It all sounds fantastic. What would I play?” And I went: “You would play the nun.” Well, she laughed for about a half hour and then said, “Tom, I’ve played hookers, I’ve played bandits, but no one’s ever had the balls to ask me to be a nun.” I also talked to her about my sister, who is from a very liberal order of nuns. In the summers, she would run the hospitality house at a prison near Buffalo. I always thought it was so incredibly ironic that my sweet sister was scheduling conjugal visits for prisoners. I told Rita all that, and she said, “Okay, just as long as I’m not going to be in one of those habits.”
Martin: Tom was fabulous in the way that I could say, “Tom, check this guy out. Is there a place for him?” And he’d say, “Yes, I’m going to write him into it.” There were some people that were just out there in the world, and not necessarily actors yet. He was really open to bringing people in, looking at them and trying to find the place for people who had this very specific New York vibe. With a network, you try to get someone hired and it takes so long. With HBO, it was fabulous: if Tom and I liked an actor, we would go to the one person over there and it turned around real quick.
Rita Moreno as Sister Peter Marie Reimondo on ‘OZ.’ (Credit: HBO)
Fontana: I was very clear in the auditions, and when people signed the contract that they might be asked to be nude, and that there would be violence. I didn’t want people who were going to be skittish.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: Tom made it clear that this was going to be groundbreaking, and that he was really targeting authenticity, so that meant that it required certain actors and certain characters to go in places that may be uncomfortable personally. There were rape scenes and all kinds of complications that weren’t going to be comfortable. He made it clear that if you don’t want to do that, then you’re not the actor for the part.
Acevedo: No, he never warned us! I think there was a nudity waiver because there might be nudity. But every week it was like, “Alright, Kirk, today you’re gonna eat s**t out of the toilet.” Every week we were just like, “Dude, as long as I don’t get raped, I’m alright.” It wasn’t a scary thing, it was kind of titillating. It wasn’t like we were all nervous about it, because we would do it. It was more of like, “What’s he gonna have us do?” I don’t ever remember him warning me, but then I’m pretty sure there were people he didn’t have to warn because we were all game to do it.
Kirk Acevedo as Miguel Alvarez on ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Winters: I was there from the inception of the show, and I told Tom, “Look, I’ll do anything you want.” And I did. The smart actors knew that we were doing a show about a prison, not a show about a prep school, and it’s cable television. If you had half a brain you knew that this was not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and it was not going to be a walk through the daisies. So that’s the way that I approached it, and obviously there were people who had a hard time with it. Some guys didn’t want to do this, some guys didn’t want to do that, but that’s the nature of the beast, I guess.
Kinney: I remember in the first episode that Edie Falco [who played a correctional officer] and I were supposed to have a love scene during an execution. As someone was being electrocuted, we were supposed to be having sex in a cell. As much as everybody took their clothes off on the show, both Edie and I felt it wasn’t the right choice, and asked if we could do it in a way that was less graphic. From that point on, that’s how my character was treated. I wasn’t one of the people who had to do [anything graphic].
Edie Falco as Officer Diane Wittlesey on ‘Oz.’ She later was cast on ‘The Sopranos’ but made occasional appearances on ‘Oz.’ (Credit: HBO)
Fontana: I have to say, over the course of the series, there was only really one actor who lied to me and said he would do whatever I asked him, and then when it came time he said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” But he wasn’t a regular and I was able to kill him off fairly quick. Let them guess who that was!
Chapter 3: Getting Into ‘The Routine’
Some TV shows take a little while to find themselves, but Oz‘s series premiere lays down the law about what viewers could expect from their time inside Emerald City. Written by Tom Fontana and directed by Darnell Martin, “The Routine,” swiftly establishes all the elements Oz would become infamous for, including densely-intertwined narratives, a parade of compelling characters, shocking acts of violence and a pervasive sense that nobody is safe within Oswald’s walls. Especially not the person you think is the main character…
Fontana: In terms of the writing of the first episode, Augustus was the first voice I heard in my head. In terms of the design of the show, Beecher was the first character that I came up with, and then McManus. One is there as a prisoner, and one is there as a warden. It just seemed like, for the audience, Beecher’s our Dante coming into the Inferno. He’s the one who’s guiding us into this world where we’re going to be exposed to these different cycles of violence.
Jean de Segonzac: The very first scene we did was in McManus’ office where he tries to put the glass on top of the cockroach. That was the very first shot on the very first day.
Kinney: I hated that scene. It was a trained cockroach; there was a cockroach handler, and back-up cockroaches. That’s a delicate area for me, cockroaches. We did endless angles on it, because Darnell did a lot of angles.
Winters: I knew no one on my first day besides Lee Tergesen. So it was like the first day of school at a juvenile delinquent reformatory. Everyone’s kind of looking around going, “Oh yeah, so you’re Alvarez, alright. I got to keep my eye on you.” Or “You’re Adebisi, alright, you’re big and scary, okay.” Or “You’re playing Said; okay, you’re kind of cool, but what’s up with the English accent?” In the first couple of days, it was just like, “What the fuck have I gotten myself in to here?” But in a good way, obviously.
Tergesen: Nobody really talked to me in the beginning. In the first four or five episodes, the extras would not talk to me. But once Beecher went crazy and attacked Schillinger [Episode 7, “Plan B”], all of a sudden everybody was like, “Hey Beecher, Beecher, Beecher, oh hey Beech!” It was so weird. It was like high school.
Fontana: This is a little piece of backstage history: we shot the pilot and the first season in Manhattan at what is now Chelsea Market, and what used to be the old Oreo cookie factory. The cafeteria had really high ceilings because the stoves had to go up to those windows to let out the smoke from baking the Oreos. We always had to cut if somebody left the cafeteria, because there was no way they could walk to the next set. It was all a bunch of different rooms.
McAdams: I’ll never forget the first time I arrived on set. You’d get off the elevator, and it would be like a normal office with people going about their duties. Then you’d turn the corner, walk down a little bit and you’re in prison.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: We were about five floors up; the first four floors were offices, and then when you got to the fifth floor, it was literally Emerald City. At any given time, there were 300 or 400 extras in there. The cells were real cells, with the right size and proximity. It was hot, sticky and you felt claustrophobic, like you were in prison. In between takes, there were waiting room areas where we could go, but I chose to stay my cell for the whole time.
Seda: It was scary when the reality hit you that this is the life for so many; at least we were actors and able to walk away at the end of the day. All the details were incredible, and it just really added to making it just so authentic. The set itself was probably the biggest character of the show.
Hudson: It was like being transported to another world. I’d walk to work from the Upper West Side down to where we were shooting, and the contrast of being on the streets of New York and then going in and being on the set of Oz was cool.
Winters: People used to ask: “How did you prepare for the role?” It was very easy. You just got off the elevator, and walked down to the set. It was a f***ing prison! With the glass cells, you realized that everyone was being watched all day long. It was very unnerving. I remember Vincent Gallo came by the set one day, and he was looking around and goes, “Man, this set’s the f***ing cream.” Meaning, they really nailed that set. And my brother [Scott William Winters, who joined the cast in Season 2 as O’Reily’s brother, Cyril] actually spent the weekend on the set by himself, just to get that feeling of incarceration.
Adebisi and Beecher get to know each other in ‘The Routine’ (Credit: HBO)
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: For my scene with Beecher in the first episode, Lee and I were meeting for the first time as actors. It was kind of organic because his character was entering the prison, and it was a new world for him, whereas I’m a lifer. The thing for me was to establish that I own him. I own his life, I own his physical body; he was going to be my bitch and do exactly what I told him to do. I had the luxury of sleeping in my cell, and I would not wash. I became one with my own odor to stake my territory [despite] the complaints of the DP and the crew. Quite often they said, “Perhaps you should shower.” But I told them I was going to stake my claim. Whatever feeling I would evoke in the crew was exactly the feelings that were intended when the actors would come in my cell: repulsion, fear and disgust. It was lovely!
Tergesen: I don’t remember that! I do remember Adewale being ridiculous. He was so f***ing good in that part. I used to say that being in that cell with Adebisi was like being on a date from hell that lasted a month. I mean, he literally grabbed my penis more than women I had dated for a month.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: I had two scenes in the first episode, and was meant to die in the second episode. But Tom liked what he saw [in the premiere], and kept liking what he saw. I’ve lived a life that gave me an insight as to what it was like to be in a gang in my teenage years, so I just brought that rawness to it. I wore my hat in the way that I used to wear when I was a teenager on the street myself. I knew that the tilt of the hat represented defiance. The costume and production were very much against me wearing the hat initially, because they wanted everybody in prison to be uniformed. I had to respect that, but I just knew that I needed to put my stamp on the character. That scene with Beecher was the first scene I shot, and when they said “Action,” I pulled the hat out of my pocket and put it on. When we wrapped and moved onto my next scene, the director said, “Wait a minute — he had the hat on. Now we have to keep it.”
Tergesen: I was so happy to get out of [Adebisi’s cell], but then I go to Schillinger’s cell. We didn’t rehearse at all on that show, so J.K. and I just met when we started shooting. The funny thing about him is when we’re playing those initial scenes, it’s like he’s the nicest guy on the planet. You know, he’s always smiling. It’s like, “I can trust this guy!” And then it just devolves. The branding thing ends up looking like I’m getting f***ed in the ass, which I didn’t realize was going to happen. Not that I minded, but when he was burning my ass it was causing me to like buck like I was getting f***ed. That was my ass, bro! No stunt ass.
De Segonzac: One image I have, which I can’t get out of my head, is Tergesen’s ass two inches from my face while Simmons is branding him. I’m just going, “This is the weirdest way of making a living that I can ever think of.”
Fontana: When it came to shooting the first episode, moments like the swastika on the ass were defining moments for the show. And the moment when Dino is naked and getting beat up in the shower was, at the time, as brutal, a scene I’d ever seen on television. Those are, to me the moments that said to people this isn’t your father’s [TV show].
Seda: The shower scene was wild. It showed how quick things can happen in prison. Dino wasn’t afraid of anyone, and I was so into being that guy that I carried that with me. I literally walked onto set butt-naked. I walked right up, and stood there talking to Darnell as if I had clothes on. I said, “Okay, let’s go. Let’s shoot this scene. What do you want me to do? You want me to do this? Want me to be here? Want me to do this? Okay. Great, let’s do it.”
Velez: The storyline with Dino and Emilio [a prisoner dying of AIDS] really resonated with me because I have friends and a family member who are HIV positive. I also loved working with Jon. There’s one scene where I could barely keep a straight face because we had done that movie together, so there was something delicious about watching him play this wise-ass character. It’s really one of the few times in the pilot that you see Gloria engaging with one of the inmates in a fun, slightly flirtatious way.
Seda: Jose Soto did such a fabulous job as Emilio. What I love about that scene was how well it was written. It wasn’t that Dino just didn’t like Emilio because he had AIDS; Dino actually found compassion for him. The fact that he honored his request to take him out was done from compassion. That was a way for Dino to be in touch with his heart. It was just brilliant.
Fontana: When I talked with Chris Albrecht, he said, “What’s the one thing you’re absolutely not allowed to do on a broadcast television?” And I said, “Kill the lead in the pilot.” And he said, “Well, then go ahead and do it.” So I hired Jon and told him this is what’s going to happen. He was cool with it, and then I hired him on Homicide, to sort of compensate for the fact that he was killed off.
Seda: For Dino, there’s a point where what was keeping him afloat was the fact that he still has his family out there. There’s a scene where his wife comes to visit him and the kids are there playing and that’s when he makes the decision that it’s never going to happen. The reality of the fact that he’s here for life really hits him. Darnell and I added a moment where Dino taps the glass, kind of like he’s touching her for the last time as a family. I don’t know if a lot of people realize or catch it, but that tap on the glass to her is basically saying that’s the last time she’s ever going to see him. From that point on, it’s just a matter of time for Dino.
Winters: I remember reading the script and going, “Oh, Dino’s a badass!” And by the way, Tom named the character after me, because my nickname is Dino. Then all of a sudden he’s dead, and I’m the one who has him lit on fire. My first thought was, “I feel pretty f***ing good, because I’m not the one dying!” But I was also blown away that this was what Tom was going to do.
McAdams: To say I was excited [to kill Dino] would be an understatement. At that point, I didn’t realize that I would be the first inmate to kill somebody on Oz. That didn’t connect until way later, what I realized the show had a reputation for killing people off. The idea that I was going to be killing someone was just a thrill, and I knew that it was going to be memorable. The fact that they were killing Jon off in the first episode told me how edgy the show was going to be. No one’s safe, and episode to episode, you don’t know what’s going to happen, who’s going to die, and how it’s going to happen. You just don’t know. You have to tune in and watch.
Seda: Talk about going out in a blaze of glory, right? That’s what he did. It was pretty wild how it was shot. I remember seeing the dummy that they had made up in the makeup trailer, and I said, “Oh my gosh, that dummy looks just like me!” When we were shooting it, I remember just looking up and telling Tim, “Hey, hey, hey, don’t actually light it.” A couple times, he kept forgetting and actually lit it. I’m like, “Wait! You’re going to drop this on my face, dummy!”
McAdams: Dropping that match under the camera and watching those flames come up was the most exciting and invigorating feeling. To this day when I see it, I still get excited. Because that wasn’t CGI, it was a glass plate. Also, being given the creative autonomy again to just go in there and have fun with it. Johnny Post wasn’t wired right, so just dropping the match would’ve been one thing. But dropping the match like, “Boom, you’re gone,” was so fun as an actor, because we were so deep in the character at that point.
Fontana: I wanted to do a show in which the audience never relaxed, because I these men who are in prison don’t get a chance to relax. So if I’m really going to try to convey what they’re going through, then the audience should never be able to kick back.
Winters: I’ve never seen this before or since: the scripts would come out, and people would take one and rush to their dressing room, a corner of the set or go in a jail cell, and read the script and see if they’re still alive at the end. It was nerve-wracking.
Seda: I don’t remember any [farewell] party. I think it was just, “All right, you’re dead. Goodbye.” But Fontana came to me and said, “Don’t worry. I’m going to bring you on Homicide.” So that worked out great! [Seda played Detective Paul Falsone on the final two seasons of Homicide.]
‘OZ’ director Darnell Martin (Photo: Getty Images)
Chapter 4: The Future was Female
When the histories of cable’s rise have been written, they tend to dwell on the accomplishments of male showrunners like David Chase, Alan Ball and Shawn Ryan. While Tom Fontana is certainly part of that group, both he and Oz‘s cast are quick to note that one of the show’s key creative architects was a woman. As the director of the original pilot presentation, and then the series premiere, Darnell Martin established the innovative visual language that distinguished OZ from anything else on TV at that point. Having gotten her start as an independent filmmaker before landing television gigs, she sought to infuse the series with some of the same spontaneity and energy that defined that era of indie movies. Martin continues to alternate the occasional feature film, like 2008’s Cadillac Records, with a diverse slate of TV credits that includes such series as Grey’s Anatomy, Grimm and Blindspot. If Tom Fontana is among the founding fathers of the premium cable boom, than Darnell Martin is its founding mother.
Fontana: I’m not a director. I never aspired to be a director, and I have no real interest in it. So I rely very heavily on directors to create a visual style that goes with the storytelling, and I trust directors that I hire to bring their best game to the playing field. Darnell was there from the beginning. She and I had worked on Homicide together, and I thought, “Oh, she’s really got some stuff going on here.” I suppose back then the idea of a woman directing a male prison show didn’t make sense to some people, but it made sense to me because of Darnell.
Martin: The funny thing is, I didn’t want to do it at first! I had brought another project to Tom, and we brought it to ABC and ABC ended up not making it. I really didn’t want to do this show. Not because I didn’t like it, it was just because I had a thing about people in jail. I grew up in a very rough place, and I know a lot of people that really needed to go to prison because the neighborhood was a lot safer with them not there. I had my own very real and personal reasons not to want to glorify that. Then I said, “Let me go visit some [prisoners].” So I visited prisons, and said, “You know what? People in jail are human beings, and there but the grace of God go I.” I didn’t want to do it if they were going to be other than me. [But when I] saw people in prison and how they were living, that helped me emotionally get around dealing with the show and made me want to do it.
Albrecht: Darnell was such a critical part of setting the tone and the style; she worked with Tom on the production design and how to shoot this. I think we all set out to do something different visually. Drama has been a staple of network television obviously, and the fact that we [at HBO] were now entering that arena, the one thing that everybody felt was we really needed to differentiate ourselves. I don’t think if any of us on the HBO side had any idea that Tom and Darnell were gonna take that so literally, and just make something that startlingly different.
Winters: Darnell Martin is no joke. She came in with a vision, and her vision just happened to match Tom’s. I think she’s kind of left out of the conversation a lot of times when it comes to Oz, and she should really be part of the conversation, because she came in there as a woman, in a hyper-male environment and she laid down the law in this jail. She really did; and people took notice.
De Segonzac: She’s someone with a real vision. Tom was always telling me, “Just do your thing.” And I, of course, was trying to do Darnell’s thing. The [visual] theme was us being in these tight quarters, just participating. Basically, we just did whatever we felt like within the moment. As you’ll see, some scenes are all on a dolly and laid out, and others are completely handheld. For one shot, I remember being on a foot dolly, and going around the edge, while Jon Seda is trying to force feed a guy who’s dying of AIDS.
Jose Soto as Emilio and Seda as Dino (Credit: HBO)
Martin: There’s an idea in television that I don’t think makes the best television, and that is you have a plan before you get there. If you’re new at doing this, that’s probably helpful. The bad thing about it is that you can have a plan, and then all of a sudden the light is over here so you have to deal with shadows or maybe an actor has to go to the hospital. There’s always some kind of issue in this business. What you need to do, and what I like to do, is go to a place, sit in that place and come up with all the ways I could shoot it. I think shot lists are so reductive, because you can go through every scene [ahead of time], but in reality, you didn’t even work with the actor. You have an idea of blocking, but it’s only you know that knows exactly how you’re going to block it, and then you’re going to make that actor a puppet. That’s a big problem. These actors were very passionate about their characters, and had very strong ideas about their characters, and they all had their homework done when they came in. They were all willing to rehearse and find it and they were generous to one another.
De Segonzac: We had to go fast, fast, fast because there was so much to do. I remember that the dolly guys would just be sitting on the dolly [between takes], and I was like, “What the f**k are you doing? There’s not sitting around here.” At 7 a.m. all the cameras were built, the sound cart was ready and the actors were on set in costume. There was one time where we were running out of time, and Tom happened to be visiting the set. Normally, he wouldn’t be there, but he showed up and he was angry that we were going to go late. So I’m saying [to Darnell], “We’ve got to go fast, so if I do this and this, will you be happy?” And she was angry at me. Tom pulled me by the arm and said, “Why are you talking to her? Just do your thing. Just do whatever you always do.” 15 minutes later the scene was done.
Kinney: Sometimes somebody would be late, and that was a bad thing, because we had to start at 7am and finish at 7pm. If somebody showed up for the first scene late, then that person had sole responsibility for killing our day. We all understood that. For the most part, there was never a hitch in any of it. Darnell had a very specific shooting style; it was a lot of pushing in. The camera was its own character. It was cool to be a part of, but at the same time, you had to hit marks a lot in terms of your acting with that style. You had to turn at exactly the moment the camera arrived. She did a lot of things as one-offs, and that saves some time, but it also makes for very complicated shots. We used to get into little dust-ups about it, but it wasn’t anything that was bad. I would just say, “I’m trying.”
One of Martin’s signature push-ins (GIF: HBO)
Tergesen: She was a very strong personality, but I got along with her pretty well. Every once in awhile there would be something camera-wise [that was tough]. I remember I had a scene with Terry Kinney, and I thought, “Why would I stand right here in a place where he can look at me?” And she’s not letting up or even letting me have an idea about what I wanted to do. She’s rolling the crane across the big main room, and I’m like, “Is this about a crane shot?” She said, “No,” and of course it was about a crane shot. It was a cool shot! Sometimes you have to give up to the people who know what they’re doing.
Hudson: I like Darnell. I did not like the fact that she really liked Eamonn Walker more than me. That really annoyed the hell out of me. She kept praising him, and didn’t have a damn thing to say to me. Since then I’ve gotten to know her. In fact I did a series called APB for Fox, and she directed one of the episodes. I really like her a lot.
Velez: I can put any episode on, and say, “Darnell shot this.” She’s got a great eye; it’s the specific way that she’ll shoot something. Or those unexpected, beautiful tracking shots that Darnell does. It’s almost like a dance with her, and theatrical as well, because it has to be seamless.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: Darnell would do these sweeping moving shots where she would literally introduce about 10 characters at the same time. There was a lot of movement, and you just had to do all your dialogue on the move, and interacting with other characters. It was very fluid style, which was tricky because as an actor you just have to be very ready, and very much engaged in your character so that you don’t miss a beat. You had to be in rhythm with the flow of the camera, because it moved a lot with Darnell. It was alive, and I think that’s what it was meant to capture.
De Segonzac: We shot everything on 16mm; there was never any question of going 35mm. Back then, the 35mm cameras were immensely huge, and very heavy. For the spaces we were crunching ourselves into, it never would have worked. We were just constantly doing stuff you could never do with a big camera or a huge dolly. At one point, I got enamored with the Dutch tilt [a canted camera angle], so I’d start my shot at a Dutch and then move back and straighten it out, or maybe even Dutch it the other way. I wanted to have fun. After a week of doing that, somebody tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a phone message from Tom, and it said, “Enough of the f***ing Dutch tilt.”
An ‘Oz’ Dutch tilt (Credit: HBO)
Fontana: The cube that Augusts is in was her idea. I kept saying to her, “We’ve got to find some place where he’s isolated, but I don’t want him to be in front of black curtains or something.” She was at some museum, and there was some kind of cube there. She told me, “You’ve got to see it, because that’s what I think we should use for Augustus.” Every director after her hated that cube! But I insisted that they had to use it in some way, shape or form because it was so expensive to build that I wanted to amortize it over the course of the series.
Martin: I was at the Whitney Biennial, and I saw this box in a room that was tilted on its side. I wanted to utilize something like that, and I brought that to the production designer [Gary Weist] who was phenomenal. From there, we started to riff; we riffed about 2001: A Space Odyssey, the way they’re kind of under this glass. We started talking the tricks we could do with the box and really show this idea of isolation, and no longer having any privacy. You can’t even go to the bathroom without the world videotaping you and watching you.
De Segonzac: I saw the same show at the Biennial. The box just looked like a silver box with windows; some kind of construction art. I was not impressed by this thing at all, and it didn’t occur to me to think twice about it. But she came while we were building the set, and she was talking all about this box that she saw. Perrineau’s character was supposed to be in a wheelchair, so he had to be able to get into so that his wheelchair would be latched down and the whole box would turn and move. We built a box that had a crank and a motor on it, and we could put Harold in there, strap him down, and send him upside down.
Seda: I got a chance to be in the box in one of the episodes where Dino comes back as a ghost. [Season 6, “A Day in the Death”] It was pretty wild. Harold had so much dialogue, and [I loved] the way he made it flow in that setting. I’m sure Harold would say he loved it because it made him become one with the character. That cube just became his M.O.
Tergesen: The crank made so much noise that you couldn’t shoot sound with it. So Harold had a lot of looping to do. I did a few things in the box, and, of course, J.K. and I did that Barry Manilow song, “The Last Duet.” [Season 5, “Variety.”] That was a song I was gonna do in the 10th grade with my girlfriend, but we never did it. As soon as I thought of it [for the episode], I knew Tom was going to love it. And then two years ago, I was sitting next to one of the guys who wrote the lyrics for that song. He said, “You used one of my songs in your show.” And I was like, “No s**t. I picked it!”
Kinney: I really liked the cube. In the two episodes I directed, [Season 3, “Cruel and Unusual Punishments” and Season 4, “Wheel of Fortune”], I did some very fun stuff with it. In my first episode, I remember making Harold be in smaller and smaller boxes, until he was inside a little dark thing. I didn’t find it an entirely successful exercise; I would have needed production values that we just didn’t have at the time. For the second one, I made the cube a big lottery thing. We spun it around with all the balls inside. I strapped myself in and tested it out before I put Harold in there to see if he was going to be able to talk and hang upside down a lot. He was amazing, that guy. He’s an acting machine. Every time he gets to the cube, he’s not only super-prepared with those monologues, but ready to take on any challenge to get it done.
Fontana: Where I get nervous is when a director creates a visual style that isn’t telling the story, because then I think they’re just showing off. But if you have a director who stages a shot like that great shot that Darnell does in the first episode where we see Emerald City for the first time, and the camera moves wide? That to me is excellent visual storytelling.
Martin: What’s great about Tom is that he understands filmmakers; he’s not trying to prove anything, and he’s really open to being collaborative. The problem now is that that we’ve dumbed down the idea of directing episodic TV. On a lot of these shows, anybody can walk in and do it. Directors like working for Tom, because Tom doesn’t consider them idiots. He created these wonderful stories, he had a great vision, and then he put it in the hands of other artists who gently put it through themselves and added new colors to it. I think he set a tone because he was not a dictator or micromanager. No one knows I directed the premiere. It started with a female director, and that was only possible because it was a forward-thinking man who thought that was important.
Chapter 5: Life in the Big House
As Oz’s first season unfolded, the cast and crew became comfortable inside this prison of their own making. Largely left to their own devices by HBO, a familial atmosphere flourished on set that was nourished and encouraged by Warden Fontana. As with all families, tensions occasionally arose, but nothing like the prison riot that closes out the first season.
Fontana: What was important for me, and what I always worked very hard to do, was take a character who was despicable and turn him into a sympathetic person. And then, just when the audience was rooting for that person, have them do something despicable again. So if you watch the series over all the seasons, you’ll see character like O’Reily who do the worst possible thing and then have this incredible moment of vulnerability. And then as a reaction to that, he does something worse! The other thing I promised to myself was that every character in Emerald City belonged there. I didn’t want to do the wrongfully convicted story. Not that that isn’t valuable; it’s just that I met so many men in prison who told me they were innocent that it felt like almost like a joke. It would also feel more mainstream to suddenly have a character in there that was innocent.
Kinney: In the first episode, Darnell saw McManus as one of those misguided, but well-intentioned educated white guys. He thinks everybody can be rehabilitated, and put back out onto the streets. But the prison system itself teaches you otherwise. Given that conundrum, this character was an anomaly in the prison. In the first episode, I was campaigning with Tom to change that. I said, “We’ve seen that guy, and he’s going to wear out. You’re going to lose interest. Let me change. Let the prison system seep into me. Let me become more and more one with it.” Slowly but surely, Tom agreed to start shaving my head a little more, to grow the beard, and to start to look a little more like a prisoner.
Hudson as Leo Glynn in ‘Oz’ (Credit: HBO)
Hudson: I thought Leo was as balanced a guy as you can get under those circumstances, but I’ve heard people say, “He was the worst. He was an awful guy.” I’m like “Really?” There was a website in the late ’90s where fans could give their comments, and I remember going online and some guy had said, “Leo seems to have a stick up his ass. That actually broke me of the habit. Even now, 20 years later, I don’t go online to find out what people think. The thing I take away from my character is — and I’m sure Tom would hate me saying it — but he was the dumbest warden! He was a well-intentioned warden, and he could be stern, but he never got to the bottom of anything. He had a murder a week and he never figured anything out. I’m like, “Can I just solve one of these frigging cases?”
De Segonzac: During the first season, there was only one accident, which I was the fault of. We were doing the riot scene in the Season 1 finale [which De Segonzac directed], and with 150 guys running around, you had to find someone each of them could do. Tergesen had the fire extinguisher and was spraying it all over the place. He was like, “Really?” and I said, “Yeah, it’ll be great, you’ll see.” There was this one young guy — who I think in real life was a violinist and he somehow got a part on the show — the guards beat him up, and they put the cuffs on him behind his back. The scene felt like it was about to lose energy, so he screams at the guards, “Get them off!” They grab him by the arms, but he’s handcuffed and that’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Now the guy is squealing, and I thought, “Wow, that’s pretty f***ing good.” But it turned out that the cuffs had cut him to the bone! I was very embarrassed.
Velez: I wasn’t in the riot episode at the end of Season 1, and that’s because Tom said, “I don’t want you to be in that episode.” Because the prisoners talked about Dr. Nathan a lot, and would be like, “Oh, Nathan’s hot.” He said, “I’m afraid it would have to get graphic. They’d wind up raping Gloria, and I don’t want that.” Which I thought was very interesting. In some ways, it would have been predictable; you would expect that to happen to the character. But then she could never go back there and I think there were all those considerations as well. We’d have to lose her, because there’s no way she would come back to work in this prison. No way at all. Tom had the wherewithal to think about the totality of the show, and being able to see it going beyond what we saw.
Velez in ‘The Routine’ (Credit: HBO)
Acevedo: At the end of every season, what Tom would do is sit down with you and say, “How’d you feel about your arc? Where do you feel that you could’ve gone or that you maybe want to go next season?” I’ve worked with everybody, and no showrunner has ever done what Tom Fontana has done. The whole storyline in the third season about Miguel being too white, and not Latino enough was something I brought up with Tom, because it was a big issue for me growing up in the South Bronx. He put all of that into the show.
McAdams: I just remember not wanting Johnny Post to go out like a punk. So I loved reading my death scene, and realizing they set him to go out in all his glory, cussing and fussing and telling people to kiss his ass. The fact that they decided they were going to chop his penis off and deliver it back as their message meant that I knew I’d spend the rest of my life being laughed at. My only request was that it was delivered in a big box, not a small box.
Velez: Tom was always really great about discussing where he thought something was going to go, and it was always in a very off-handed manner. At one point, we hung out and had steak and whiskey, and he said, “I’ve got something I’m thinking about, and tell me if it’s crazy. Would this woman ever fall in love with a prisoner?” And I said, “Absolutely.” He said, “I’ve spoken to other women and they said no.” I replied, “When you fall in love with somebody, sometimes you can’t help who that is. The more complicated the better. Please make that happen!” So she fell in love with Ryan O’Reily. I’ve never had a woman tell me that they didn’t buy it or that they thought it was inappropriate.
Fontana: Initially, we had a consultant who had been in prison, but he wanted to be a writer and he just would have preferred if I had just handed him the pen and said, “You can write everything.” So that was very short lived. All I can say is I that did two years of research, and I continued to read and talk to COs and ex-cons, so I kept having conversations about what was going on in prisons. The thing about prison is that no two prisons are the same, so I had a lot of room to make up s**t. But I also took my responsibility very seriously; I didn’t want anything to be salacious or sensationalistic just purely for that. Anything that happened had to come out of character. On the other hand, you also find out stuff that really happened, like a guy who worked in the prison cafeteria hated this other guy so he fed him broken glass. My attitude was if something was real, then it was fair game. Oddly enough, as the series went, I would get yelled at for something I didn’t make up, but people assumed that I had made it up.
Albrecht: We were certainly put back on our heels a few times [by the content], and I don’t remember if we ever actually asked Tom to change something or just voiced our concerns about things. We really were charting new territory here. We had no idea what was possible to do, and the content of Oz was certainly beyond any of the content of the movies that were on HBO.
Winters as O’Reily in ‘The Routine’ (Credit: HBO)
Winters: I’ll tell you one thing: I had two friends in prison during Oz, and they were like, “You motherf***ers got that s**t right.” Prison is a microcosm of our society, and a lot of bad s**t happens in our society every day. I’ve been on panels where I’ve heard this question from some white guy whose face is melting into his khaki pants, blue blazer and red tie: “Oh, is this really [accurate]?” It’s like, go f**k yourself. Have you ever been in prison? Have you ever even visited a prison? Because I’ve visited prison, and it is not a cute place. There is some horrific s**t that happens there. I don’t think Tom went deep enough. He could have gone so much darker, because the stories that we heard while we were making this show, would never even pass the HBO censors. So, you know, suck on that.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: In terms of the sexuality and sensationalism, there were occasions where I felt it was not always necessary. But then there are occasions where it would go there because it was written from an authentic place. I think there’s a wonderful balance, and Tom was always open to that collaborative dance. We all trusted Tom. We didn’t necessarily like him, and I mean that in the best possible way. He’d done meticulous research so you knew it was not just some flippant, sensational kind of thing.
Martin: There’s a scene with Schillinger after he’s branded Beecher where he’s just talking to him. I said, “You know what I want you to do? I would like you to have your shoes off and your foot in his lap, and you’re making him give you a foot rub.” For some reason, that just seemed right. The branding had nothing to do with sex; it was about power. There’s such an intimacy to the foot rub, and J.K. just ate it up; he was tickling Lee with his toe. That scene explains to me, in a weird way, how I handled [the sexuality]. Sex, in general, is not an empty thing to me, and sex scenes are not about, “Lay on top of this person and bounce harder, and then it’s over.” It has to be about something. Beecher probably massaged his wife’s feet, you know what I mean? So that scene is about something other than power, because we just played that beat with Schillinger tattooing the swastika on his ass.
Kinney: When the romance between Beecher and Keller started [in Season 2], here were two straight guys that were being asked to engage in a graphic depiction of a gay prison couple. They were a little bit shy going into it; one of the things that happened was that everything was out in the open. Everything was shot in a wide open space, so there was no sense of, “Hey, this is a private set.” We would all stand at the monitors and watch this stuff. And they went for it. The whole dynamic in that building was “Go for it,” and that’s what those guys did. What was surprising was how it caught fire. That was one of the first things that became a really popular element of the show. There were a lot of viewing parties for those two.
Chris Meloni joined ‘Oz’ as Chris Keller in Season 2 (Credit: HBO)
Tergesen: I loved the part of the show. In my opinion, it was never about them being gay, it was just about them being in love. If you can find love in a place like that, you’re lucky. My first memory of Chris is that he came to set for a costume fitting, and he was wearing a Tool shirt. And I was like, “This guy seems like a tool.” I told him, “Listen man, let’s go have dinner.” So we went out to dinner, and I said, “You’ve seen the first season, so you know we’re trying to push the envelope. I know the tendency is for two guys who are not gay to try and skirt around it, but I have a feeling we’re going to be doing a lot of this and I think we should try and make it sexy.” Chris looked at me for 10 seconds and then said, “Wow.” But I feel like we did that; there were some amazing moments of tenderness [between them], and I love that it was just about the love. The funny thing is, just as an aside, he and I went to a Tool concert the other night!
Acevedo: We worked together twelve hours a day, and then we would go out four to five nights a week with each other. We were all in our twenties, and we saw each other at work and after work. We all hung out with each other in general, but there was a devious mentality with the inmates. Adewale would get these scenes where it would be like “Adebisi rapes this guy,” and we would be like, “What you going to do?” He would say, “I don’t know,” so we would give him [advice]. Like, “I think you should grab him by the hair or rip his pants.” That was the best part, because the material was so heavy and emotional. You can’t walk on set and be like that the whole day; you’d be so burnt out. It was easier to joke around during those moments.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: There were several times when we had extras on the set where altercations would break out. They would! They were quickly broken up, but it was just the nature of the beast. When you’re being pushed to be as defensive as you can without actually being the actual prisoner, there were times when it would spill over. I know for myself, certainly with the guards or the warden, I wouldn’t mix with them. Because they were guards, you know what I mean? Many times there were blurred lines, and in the heated scenes you’d go overboard sometimes. That’s why you got such great chemistry and great work coming out of it.
Hudson: I knew Adewale [before Oz]. We shot the movie Congo in Costa Rica together and we became, I thought, really good friends. When I first got the show and found out he was going to be on it, I was like, “Great!” Then he became Adebisi and suddenly I go, “Who the hell is this guy?” He maintained that character for years. Towards the end, in the last couple of seasons, we went, “Okay, we can let our characters go. We do know each other.” There was about four years there where I don’t think I could even speak to him.
Velez: I remember the first time I met Adewale on set, he literally almost skipped towards me! He took my hand, and with the most incredible smile said, “I’ve been wanting to meet you.” I was like, “What?” We just walked hand-in-hand across the stage just gushing about each other, and this is this guy who plays Adebisi! Take your pick between him and Schillinger about which is more reprehensible. I had the same experience with J.K. when he was in the infirmary. At one point, he was sitting there and he had the most beautiful, glowing smile. It was interesting. Sometimes in the beginning I couldn’t put two and two together between the actors and the characters.
Kinney: I went out with Adewale all the time. People would recognize him immediately because of that little hat and everything else. He’s a beautiful man. We’d go to bars, and he was quite popular. I hung out with everybody, especially Tom and his posse — Lee and the Winters brothers.
Adebisi abiding in his cell in ‘The Routine’ (Credit: HBO)
Winters: At the end of the day, we were all just a bunch of kids, even the guards. Most of us were new to this. You would want to think that there was animosity on the set between the guards and the prisoners, and there might of been a little tension off set here and there. But the truth of the matter was that we were just a bunch of golden retriever puppies in a storm box going bananas. In between scenes and during down time, there were guys break dancing, having a push-up contests, working on their one-man shows and reading poetry. It was really like the Royal Fontana Company, a kind of theatrical experience during the day. Tom and his crazy roving company of just insane bandits, just going, “What the f**k just happened?”
Chapter 6: What Oz Hath Wrought
By the time Oz ended its six season run in 2003, HBO’s ranks of original programs had swelled to include such era-defining shows as, The Sopranos, The Wire, and Sex and the City. The larger cable landscape had changed as well: Showtime had ramped up its originals slate with Soul Food and Queer as Folk, and in 2002, FX premiered The Shield. In several cases, these descendants overshadowed their ancestor in terms of ratings and awards. Still, 20 years later Oz remains a singular TV series, and a foundational experience for everyone involved in its making.
Fontana: HBO didn’t bother us with ratings. If they did marketing or demographic research, they didn’t share it with me. The thing that Chris said to me was, “I don’t care if this show is talked about in the TV section of the newspaper. I want it on the op-ed page.” So anytime somebody on an op-ed page made a reference to the show, he considered that a 40 share of a Nielsen rating. He wanted HBO and the show in places where people who don’t watch television are looking. I had no idea what the ratings were; all I knew is that he said, “Let’s make more of them,” and I said “Yippee.”
Albrecht: I got a lot of comments [about Oz] from people who were my peers in the entertainment business, so I knew that people were paying attention to it. I think that was the first step towards having it be an impact. I don’t know how many subscribers we had at that time — 15 or 17 million maybe — but the fact that we were getting that kind that kind of attention for something that we had done for our programming strategies [told us] we were in uncharted territory. There was a bridge here we could continue to widen and build as long as we were prepared to make the investment.
Winters: Back in 1997, who had HBO? I didn’t. Did you? And given the content of the show, we were going to work thinking, “Are these people f***ing crazy? No one’s going to watch this.”
Tergesen: Right before it started to air, a bunch of us had this thought, like, “Oh my God, what the f**k are people gonna say when they see this thing?” And there were definitely some people like that. One of my favorite reviews was a review that said, “This show offends God and it offends me.” But then it came on, and it was such a great show. And it was a great show to be in New York doing, because people were so verbal. When the show was on, there was always a bunch of stuff happening with people on the street. People who had been to jail would be like, “Yo man, I love that show you’re doing, but I just gotta tell you — the sex stuff, it’s not like that.” Like really bro? You need to tell me this on the street? I wasn’t thinking about whether or not you had sex in prison until you just brought it up now.
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Hudson: I got a call on to be on some talk show on MSNBC; the Monica Lewinsky thing was going on, and the wanted me to come on a panel to discuss Bill Clinton. I didn’t know why they asked me, but I go on the show and I say, “Well, you know, we all make mistakes.” The commentator said, “That is not what you said on the show.” Then it occurred to me that they actually thought I was a warden! They were dealing with it like I was this authority having worked in prison. I don’t know who did their homework, but I’m like, “I’m an actor. What I say on the show comes from Tom Fontana and the writers. It’s nothing to do with me.”
Velez: There was some strange fan mail about outfits they wanted Gloria to wear. I was like, “Wow, this is just a little bit too much.”
Acevedo: All of us would get mail from prisoners. I would get mail constantly. “You remind me of me. You remind me of my brother.” Or, “Hey, can I get a job? Because I was really in prison and I know what’s up.” Stuff like that. The one complaint that people did say was, “Goddamn, everybody’s so handsome in prison!” All of us were too good-looking to be in prison. We’re actors, though. I think probably none of us would survive in prison.
Fontana: I took the responsibility of doing the first drama series for HBO very seriously. Because when you’re given unlimited freedom in terms of language, sexuality, and visual storytelling, it’s very easy to go, “I’m free at last! I can do anything I want!” It was a real lesson for me to try to truly use the violence and the sex when I felt it was necessary for character stuff, and not just to put it in because I could. Not knowing who the next people at HBO doing drama series would be, I felt a responsibility to them. If I f***ed up, Chris would say to them, “I trusted Fontana and he f***ed it up, so I’m not trusting anyone after that.” Fortunately, I didn’t f**k it up too much, and David Chase was the next guy in the door.
Albrecht: First and foremost, OZ was an “Open for Business” sign for HBO. But it wasn’t like all of a sudden the floodgates opened; it was still a growing process. Even The Sopranos was brought to us through Brillstein-Grey, because Brad Grey had been a dear friend of HBO for a long time. The idea that he was going to pitch a show to us was not unusual, but what was unusual was that it was an hour-long drama instead of Fraggle Rock or a comedy special.
Winters: When HBO got wind that hour-long programming could work, they greenlit The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, and then Oz kind of got lost in the conversation a little bit. I’ve always looked at that as a little unfair to Tom, because Tom really needs to be credited as the guy who literally broke down the walls of late night [original] programming for cable television. It’s not sour grapes at all, because those shows were amazing. All I’m saying is that Oz was the guinea pig, and guinea pigs usually get left out of the equation. But you’d have to be really academically bankrupt or just stupid to watch OZ and not see the bigger picture. In mean, in 1997, one of our lead characters was a Muslim. People are talking about Muslims on TV now, and we did it 20 years ago. Tom was so ahead of the game that it frightened people, and they’re just figuring it out now.
Kareem Said talking to his Muslim brothers. (Credit: HBO)
Kinney: All of us were resentful; that’s just the truth. The Sopranos came on, and we loved that show. I still do, obviously. We just really felt like the bastard cousin. We kept wanting recognition; we kept wanting marketing and publicity to put us out there more. We kept wanting to be put into at least the mainstream of cable, since we were the first cable drama ever. We were all working under the radar, and we were all wanting the radar to find us a little bit.
McAdams: Twenty years is a long time with multiple generation gaps, so there are a lot of people who just don’t really know the value of what this show meant to cable television. They don’t know how it set the foundation for all these other shows that came on HBO that everybody loved. Not just The Sopranos; I’m talking about shows like The Corner and The Wire. I was blessed to work on The Wire for a number of seasons, and people get more excited about me mentioning that then they do when I mention Oz. That’s because they don’t remember Oz
Albrecht: I think maybe from the subject matter point of view, Oz was a tougher show to watch than a lot of the others, even though the others were groundbreaking in their own way. Oz was more violent, and that’s saying a lot compared to The Sopranos. Even in The Sopranos, you didn’t see people get killed a lot; they god killed off-camera. In OZ, the violence and stuff like that happened right in front of your face. The other shows were maybe easier on the stomach for people.
Tergesen: You now, whether Oz gets included in a list [of influential shows] or not, it doesn’t matter. I know what it was, and to this day, I find people are always stopping me and talking about it. So was The Sopranos a major hit? Yes. But it was part of a process. There wouldn’t have been a Sopranos if there wasn’t an Oz.
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: I think the very reason that we’re talking about it today shows that it’s not overshadowed. We were first, and Oz was probably an uncompromising show that was always going to be a hard pill to swallow. But what it has become as a result is a cult phenomenon. The Sopranos was slightly more commercial, and a little bit more palatable but Oz was uncompromising.
Martin: I think Oz was so far ahead its time, because it didn’t have a Tony Soprano. That was deliberate on Tom’s part, because he really wanted an ensemble piece and he loved this idea of the guy you love might die. In a weird way, Oz shot itself in the foot, because there’s nobody for you to hold onto. Tom would kill them off so quickly. You watch for the performances, but not for any one performance. That couldn’t work for a very long time, and now where do we see it working? Game of Thrones also has no Tony Soprano. Oz is the one that started that. It’s a very forward way of thinking, and now everyone’s thinking that way.
Fontana: Even though they were both about criminals, The Sopranos was so different from Oz that it wasn’t like it a copy of something we did. It existed in its own universe. I’m glad Oz worked for HBO, and gave them the courage to keep pushing the boundaries that it did with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under and all the shows that have come since.
Albrecht: I learned a tremendous amount by doing Oz Tom was a consummate showrunner and supportive friend. There’s a real bond that’s made when you go through something like that. I’m incredibly proud of the show, and I always talk about it like Tom and Barry were a little like Lewis and Clark, looking down at the Pacific going “Holy crap, we made it.”
De Segonzac: What I like about the show is that it’s completely timeless. Re-watching the first episode, it could be happening today. It’s also just a great memory of what filmmaking can be about, and the kind of feeling that happens if the people involved are given free rein.
Tergesen: Oz changed me in a lot of ways, and most of the time work doesn’t, you know? I learned a lot about myself as an actor, and I have a career that’s largely based on the fact that I did this show 20 years ago. I’m so happy that I got that chance, and the relationships that I still have to this day. When J.K. won the Oscar for Whiplash, I texted him, “Wow, I just realized I licked the boots of an Oscar winner.” And his return text was, “If memory serves you also shit in the face of an Oscar winner.”
Future Oscar winner J.K Simmons as Vern Schillinger on ‘Oz.’ (Credit: HBO)
Akinnuoye-Agbaje: No matter where I go in the world, people will always call me Adebisi, and that’s cool with me because it’s been the foundation of my success. Whatever role I play is a result of writers, directors and producers watching Oz. And I think it made people aware of what goes on behind those bars. I was invited to Rikers to speak to some of the younger offenders in there, because the prisoners were some of the most popular viewers of the show, and felt that it was an authentic voice as far as it could be.
Seda: Every now and then, someone will be like, “Hey! I love Dino, man. It was the best character. Why’d they kill you?” I’m like, “Aw, thanks.” It’s great to be a part of something that when you pour so much into and you get so much passion in your heart. It was just a great project to be a part of.
Acevedo: This is gonna sound so mushy, but Oz was the truest sense of an artistic family that I could ever, ever have. I was in New York two months ago, and I had drinks at Tom’s house. I still talk to most of the guys. So there’s that sense of family, and other actors looking out for you. This whole business is really not forgiving, so for that to be one of my first jobs spoiled me. When I go on any other show, and I see a guest star come on the set, I think about how nervous I was [on Oz]. So I try to be as welcoming as possible. I go, “If you want to ad lib, throw it at me.” I make them feel that it’s okay to f**k up.
Velez: This truly was a family. You hear people say that, but I just remember hanging out watching people’s scenes, and I remember the level of commitment to the work and to the collaborative spirit. You don’t get that often in your career. It made me a better actor and gave me something that I’m proud of to be a part of. And I met some great people that I love.
McAdams: Oz set the foundation for what my career is today, working as a professional stuntman. That only happened because of the exposure I had to the stuntpeople that I met on Oz. It changed my family’s life, too, because when I left New York and went back to Maryland, the dream was real at that point. Oz showed me what was possible in life, and the belief system and faith that I gathered built my confidence for everything else I’ve been able to accomplish.
Hudson: For me, Oz brought a certain integrity and honesty that touches you on a deeper level. It was the most amazing cast I think I’ve ever worked with.
Winters: I’ve been on a lot of great shows, but Oz is the biggest, baddest motherf***er I could ever have been a part of. That was a period of time that will never be repeated, and for that I’m eternally grateful. Plus it was where I got my chops: I learned how to fail, and I learned how to succeed. Nothing will ever come close to it, ever.
Kinney: I have two personal legacies that really shaped my entire being as an artist. One is my theater company, Steppenwolf, which shaped the way I see the world through art. The second thing is Oz. Tom gave me the language for filmmaking and that side of things, and the idea of having one person be the captain of the shop. Tom was the great decider for all of us, and that really shaped so much of how I treated everything after that as an artist. I don’t do anything unless I think it has that kind of vision now. Because of Tom, my standards were raised, and I think all of ours were.
Fontana: As a writer, Oz liberated me in a way that I didn’t know that I needed to be liberated, in terms of how to tell stories and how to develop characters. On a personal level, being friends with the cast has enhanced my life. I get asked every couple of weeks when I’m bringing the show back. But the sets are gone and the actors are all too expensive, so there’s no chance of it. I couldn’t afford Dean Winters or J.K. Simmons anymore! So I can’t say that I sat up night cursing the darkness that we didn’t get the recognition [at the time]. What’s funny is that it’s taken 20 years, but now everybody’s saying that. You know what I mean? I lived long enough to hear it.
Oz can be streamed on Amazon Prime and HBO Go.
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The first image that comes to mind when I think of Cary Grant is the classy gentleman that ultimately became his signature style. Most brilliant of all in Grant’s impressive repertoire perhaps was his ability to add the bumbling to the suave sophisticate. That’s the man I adore, but that man didn’t come about easily. It was hard work and perseverance that led to the archetype that’s still recognized as the domain of just one man. One.
Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England on January 18, 1904. From 1932 to 1966 he appeared in over 70 motion pictures becoming one of the greatest movie stars in the world. Ever. And that’s not an exaggeration as you well know. Beloved and admired by the masses and his peers Grant mastered various film genres turning in memorable performances in broad comedies, murder mysteries, adventure stories and romances.
On that road to becoming Cary Grant the image, Cary Grant the actor played men with numerous careers and from different walks of life. It’s quite the impressive resume, one that goes well beyond a gorgeous exterior. Why don’t I show you?
The Cary Grant Résumé
Cary Grant
1 Handsome Movie Star Way, Hollywood, CA 01184 – (000) 227-9472 – [email protected]
Summary:
At least twelve rich, playboy types if you don’t include the five successful businessmen.
Ten soldiers
Six newspaper men/writers
Six doctors/scientists
Five artistic types
Four government agents
Three pilots
Three advertising executives
Two supernatural beings
One Earl, a policeman, an engineer, a lawyer, an economist, a politician, a few unsavory types, half a dozen or so times involved in espionage.
The handsome, rich bachelor often, but was also a loving husband and father to several women and numerous children
Highlights:
Hard-working and reliable
Energetic, well-executed pratfalls
Distinctive double-take
Proficient at fast-talk
Style Icon
Unique voice
Exceptional romantic skills
Great with pets and children
*Experience:
Rich men and playboys (1932 to 1962)
Philip Shayne in Delbert Mann’s That Touch of Mink (1962)
Johnnie Aysgarth in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941)
C. K. Dexter Haven in George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Alec Walker in John Cromwell’s In Name Only (1939)
Jerry Warriner in Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937)
Ernest Bliss in Alfred Zeisler’s The Amazing Adventure (1936)
Gerald Fitzgerald in Elliott Nugent’s Enter Madame! (1935)
Jack Clayton in Wesley Ruggles’ I’m No Angel (1933)
Jeffrey Baxter in Paul Sloane’s The Woman Accused (1933)
Romer Sheffield in William Seiter’s Hot Saturday (1932)
Charlie Baxter in Dorothy Arzner’s Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
Ridgeway in Alexander Hall’s Sinners in the Sun (1932)
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Businessman (1934 to 1966)
Sir William Rutland in Charles Walters’ Walk Don’t Run (1966)
(and widower) Tom Winters in Melville Shavelson’s Houseboat (1958)
Clemson Reade in Sidney Sheldon’s Dream Wife (1953)
Julian De Lussac in Frank Tuttle’s Ladies Should Listen (1934)
Malcolm Trevor in Lowell Sherman’s Born to be Bad (1934)
PS – If you’re thinking that Cary Grant as business man looks very similar to Cary Grant rich playboy – well, yeah.
Men of science (1934 to 1951)
Physician, Dr. Noah Praetorius in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s People Will Talk (1951)
Chemist, Dr. Barnaby Fulton in Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business (1952)
Neurosurgeon, Dr. Eugene Norland Ferguson in Richard Brooks’ Crisis (1950)
Pediatrician, Dr. Madison Brown in Don Hartman’s Every Girl Should Be Married (1948)
Paleontologist, David Huxley in Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Maurice Lamar in Harlan Thompson’s Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
Soldiers (1932 to 1959)
Lt. Cmdr. Matt T. Sherman in Blake Edwards’ Operation Petticoat (1959)
Cmdr. Andy Crewson in Stanley Donen’s Kiss Them for Me (1957)
Anthony in Stanley Kramer’s The Pride and the Passion (1957)
Captain Henri Rochard in Howard Hawks’ I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Captain Cassidy in Delmer Daves’ Destination Tokyo (1943)
Sergeant Cutter in George Stevens’ Gunga Din (1939)
Captain Andre Charville in George Fitzmaurice’s Suzy (1936)
British Officer, Micahel Andrews in Charles Barton’s and Louis J. Gasnier’s The Last Outpost (1935)
Lietenant B. F. Pinkerton in Marion Gering’s Madame Butterfly (1932)
Lt. Jaeckel (naval officer) in Marion Gering’s Devil and the Deep (1932)
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Writers and newspaper men (1934 to 1944)
Mortimer Brewster in Frank Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Reporter, Roger Adams in George Stevens’ Penny Serenade (1941)
Patrick “Pat” O’Toole in Leo McCarey’s Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Walter Burns in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940)
Reporter Charlie Mason in Richard Wallace’s Wedding Present (1936)
Newspaper publisher, Porter Madison III in Marion Gering’s Thirty Day Princess (1934)
Spies or government agents (1933 to 1964)
Including this one because it borders on “spying” – Walter in Ralph Nelson’s Father Goose (1964)
Peter Joshua in Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963)
Devlin in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946)
Captain Cummings in Lowell Sherman’s She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Con men, grifters, a thief and a politician (1932 to 1955)
Retired Cat Burglar in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955)
Gambler and grifter, Joe “the Greek” Adams in H. C. Potter’s Mr. Lucky (1943)
Con man, Nick Boyd in Rowland V. Lee’s The Toast of New York (1937)
Con man, adventurer, Jimmy Monkley in George Cukor’s Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
Gambler, Ace Corbin in Louis J. Gasnier’s and Max Marcin’s Gambling Ship (1933)
Nick Townsend in Josef von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus (1932)
Pilots (1933 to 1939)
Geoff Carter in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Ken Gordon in James Flood’s Wings in the Dark (1935)
Henry Crocker in Stuart Walker’s The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
Men of the arts (1937 to 1957)
Nickie Ferrante in Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember (1957)
Dick Nugent in Irving Reis’ The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
Cole Porter in Michael Curtiz’s Night and Day (1946)
(Crooked) Showman Jerry Flynn in Alexander Hall’s Once Upon a Time (1944)
Jimmy Hudson in Robert Riskin’s When You’re in Love (1937)
Drifters, activists, miscellaneous fellows or regular Joes (1932 to 1944)
Ernie Mott in Clifford Odets’ None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Mill worker and activist, Luopold Dilg in George Stevens’ The Talk of the Town (1942)
Farmer, Matt Howard in Frank Loyd’s The Howards of Virginia (1940)
Johnny Case in George Cukor’s Holiday (1938)
Film debut as javelin thrower/jealous husband, Stephen Matthewson in Frank Tuttle’s This Is the Night (1932)
A lawyer, an economist and an engineer (1940 to 1958)
Economist, Philip Adams in Stanley Donen’s Indiscreet (1958)
Engineer, George Rose in Norman Taurog’s Room for One More (1952)
Lawyer, Nick Arden in Garson Kanin’s My Favorite Wife (1940)
Advertising executives (1948 to 1959)
Roger O. Thornhill in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959)
Jim Blandings in H. C. Potter’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
An Earl (1960)
Victor, Earl of Rhyall in Stanley Donen’s The Grass is Greener (1960)
A police officer/detective (1936)
Danny Barr in Raoul Walsh’s Big Brown Eyes (1936)
An angel and a ghost (1937 and 1947)
Dudley in Henry Koster’s The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
George Kerby in Norman Z. McLeod’s Topper (1937)
References:
“the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.” – Alfred Hitchcock
Ian Fleming modeled pop culture phenomenon, James Bond partially with Grant in mind.
Has appeared on numerous “sexiest stars” and “greatest movie stars” lists.
On American Film Institute’s list of top 100 U.S. love stories, compiled in June 2002, Grant led all actors with six of his films on the list. An Affair to Remember (1957) was ranked #5; followed by: #44 The Philadelphia Story (1940) #46 To Catch a Thief (1955) #51 Bringing Up Baby (1938) #77 The Awful Truth (1937) #86 Notorious (1946).
Was named #2 on The Greatest Screen Legends actor list by the American Film Institute.
Has eight films on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Funniest Movies: Bringing Up Baby (1938) at #14, The Philadelphia Story (1940) at #15, His Girl Friday (1940) at #19, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) at #30, Topper (1937) at #60, The Awful Truth (1937) at #68, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) at #72 and She Done Him Wrong (1933) at #75.
“The greatest leading man to ever appear on the silver screen.” – Aurora
“You see, he didn’t depend on his looks. He wasn’t a narcissist, he acted as though he were just an ordinary young man. And that made it all the more appealing, that a handsome young man was funny; that was especially unexpected and good because we think, ‘Well, if he’s a Beau Brummel, he can’t be either funny or intelligent’, but he proved otherwise” – George Cukor
He received a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. The inscription on his statuette read “To Cary Grant, for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with respect and affection of his colleagues”. On being presented with the award, his friend Frank Sinatra announced: “It was made for the sheer brilliance of acting … No one has brought more pleasure to more people for so many years than Cary has, and nobody has done so many things so well”.
Audrey Hepburn in Charade, “Do you know what’s wrong with you? Nothing.”
Additional references available upon request.
♦
As I perused Cary Grant’s filmography for this post I noticed a few things I’d never realized. The first is that there are far too many Cary Grant movies I’ve yet to see. Then I noticed that Cary Grant never made a science fiction movie, which is interesting. In addition, Mr. Grant never made a Western. Huh. It seems he did forge a few Western connections, however. For instance, Grant appeared as himself in a cameo in Mervyn LeRoy’s Without Reservation (1943) starring Claudette Colbert and Westerns legend, John Wayne and he turned the Northwest upside down in Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece.
Anyway, no one can dispute Mr. Grant’s versatility as his resume illustrates. When one thinks of a “Jack of all trades” it’s usually followed by “master of none,” a person who can do passable work at various tasks, but does not necessarily excel at any of them. That is not Cary Grant. Cary Grant excelled at everything he attempted in the movies, which is why the mark he made is still felt. As film critic and historian David Thomson states in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film – Cary Grant “was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema.” I’ll add that it was due to his versatility and the persona that is forever defined by only him that his importance as an actor and film icon never diminishes. There is only one man who has a resume like Cary Grant. When asked, “who is today’s Cary Grant?” filmmaker, Robert Trachtenberg who made Cary Grant: A Class Apart replied, “No one.”
NO ONE.
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Happy birthday wherever you are.
*Notes: Mr. Grant’s film roles are separated by categories of my choosing in the resume. Keep in mind that there are quite a few instances where roles (categories) overlap. As such any number of roles can be noted under a few categories, but I chose not to repeat movies.
More on Cary Grant:
The A-B-Cs of Cary Grant
The Inimitable Voice of Cary Grant
Cary Grant: The Road to Suspicion
Cary Grant’s Greatest Co-Star, Irene Dunne
Self-Plagiarism is Style: Hitchcock, Grant and North by Northwest
Charade: Grant, Hepburn and Paris Never Looked Better
The Bishop’s Wife
Howard Hawks in His Own Words
SHE DONE HIM WRONG, Will Hays
High Society in The Philadelphia Story
The Hitchcock Signature
Set a Thief…To Catch a Thief
The Awful Truth…the matter of Mr. Smith
Cary Grant is by far the actor that has been mentioned most often on Once Upon a Screen. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Grant made two movies with titles that begin “Once Upon a…”
Cary Grant’s Résumé The first image that comes to mind when I think of Cary Grant is the classy gentleman that ultimately became his signature style.
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"Mo Soul" Player Playlist 11 October
Jaffa - Elevator
Clara Hill Feat. Marc Mac - Everything
Roux Spana - Turn Me Out
Alley Pat - Pats Rubber Band
Dr. John - Kingdom Οf Izzness
Fkj & Tom Misch - Losing My Way
Cloud - Summer Rain
Ernie Hines - Our Generation
The Soul Motivators - Gravy Train
Keith Mansfield - Funky Fanfare
Skalpel - Ninjazz
Nicola Conte Apresenta Rosalia De Souza - Maria Moita
Skowa & Mafia - Deus Me Faca Funky
Sleep Walker - Brotherhood (Marc Marc Dirty Jazz Remix)
John Miles - Slow Down
If you really want to enjoy music and help musicians and bands, buy their lp’s or cd’s and don’t download mp3 formats. There is nothing like good quality sound!!!
(Angel Lo Verde / Mo Soul)
#mo soul#playlist#music#soul#blues#funk#jazz#lounge#reggae#rock#fusion#house#r&b#afro funk#disco funk#acid jazz#nu jazz
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August 29, 2018: Obituaries
Nancy Church, 96
Nancy Lee Alexander Church, "Nana," 96, of North Wilkesboro, widow of John Robert Church passed away Monday, August 27, 2018, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law in North Wilkesboro. She was born in Matthews, N.C., on March 21, 1922; Mrs. Church was the daughter of Neilly Orman Alexander and Hattie Smith Alexander.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband, John Robert Church; four brothers, Glenn, David, Franklin, and Ralph; three sisters, Mary Neil, Ruth, and Doris. Mrs. Church is survived by her daughter, Dr. Karolen Church Bowman and her favorite son-in-law, Dr. J. Thomas Bowman of North Wilkesboro; grandchildren, Dr. John Daniel Bowman and wife Ruhi of Highland Park, Illinois; Dr. David Neil Bowman and wife Mandy Jones of Wake Forest, N.C.; Paul Thomas Bowman of Asheville, N.C.; and Katherine Lee Lundy and husband Nathan of North Wilkesboro; great grandchildren Debra, Abigail, and Elijah Bowman, and Flynn Lundy.
Mrs. Church attended high school in Matthews, and graduated with a degree in Home Economics from Woman's College (Now UNC-G) in Greensboro and received her Master's degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. For a while she taught Home Decorative Arts at Bowling Green College in Kentucky.
While teaching high school in Haw River, N.C., she met John Robert Church from North Wilkesboro who was then working for Melville Dairy. The folks she was living with arranged a dinner that included Nancy and John Robert. After that dinner, she would say with a smile, they went for a walk, and the rest is history. While they were seeing each other, John Robert went into the Army in 1943; was in the Second Wave of the invasion against German forces in occupied France at Normandy, was wounded and received the Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars. After he returned home from World War II, they were married on Oct. 25, 1947 and returned to North Wilkesboro where she became a homemaker. Clearly, she was a strong woman behind a successful man. John Robert Church passed away in Feb. of 1981.
Mrs. Church loved to sew and make quilts and was widely recognized for being instrumental in the growth of Home Demonstration Clubs in this area. An excellent cook, she was known for her lemon pound cakes and chocolate cakes--which she always said weren't quite up to par--but she was the only person ever who said that.
A lifelong Presbyterian, and a faithful member of the North Wilkesboro Presbyterian congregation, Mrs. Church was very active in the Children's Program, Sunday School, Bible School, she was the Youth Group leader, and a member of the Women's Circle. In fact, in 1965 she was elected as the first female Deacon in the North Wilkesboro church.
Burial services will be held on Sunday, Sept. 2, at 2 p.m. at Mountlawn Memorial Park in North Wilkesboro. Everyone is invited to attend. Funeral services will be held on Monday, Sept. 3, at the North Wilkesboro Presbyterian Church on E Street in North Wilkesboro. The family will greet friends beginning at 10 a.m., with the funeral service beginning at 11 a.m. Officiating will be Dr. Susan Moorefield.
Memorials may be made to the Wilkes Community College Endowment Corporation or the North Wilkesboro Presbyterian Church Building Fund.
Patricia Bentley 71
Ms. Patricia Ann Bentley age 71 of Ferguson passed away Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Wilkes Senior Village.
Funeral services were held August 29, at Reins Sturdivant Chapel with Pastor Billy Hoss Moore officiating.
Ms. Bentley was born March 11, 1947 in Caldwell County to Jay Wesley and Mary Lou Welsh Bentley. She was retired from Broyhill Furniture. Ms. Bentley was a member of Independent Decision Baptist Church in Lenoir.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by a son; Carl Bentley and a brother; J.C. Bentley.
She is survived by two brothers; Gene Bentley and wife Eliza of Ferguson and Jerry Edward Bentley and wife JoAnn Bentley of Ferguson, three grandchildren; Caleb Bentley Lane, Nathan Carroll and Amber Yoder, nieces and nephews; Allen Bentley, Pam Furr and husband Wayne, Gerald Bentley and Jaime Lane and husband Chris, great nieces and nephews; Kimberly Lane and Katelyn Lane.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice 126 Executive Drive Suite 110 Wilkesboro, NC 28697.
Eugene Hartley, 74
Mr. Eugene (Gene) Hayes Hartley, age 74 of Boomer, husband of Betty Lou Johnson Hartley, died Saturday, August 25, 2018 at his home.
Funeral services were August 28, at Sharon Walker Baptist Church with the Rev. Fred Staley and the Rev. Burl Jones officiating. Mr. Hartley was born February 3, 1944 in Wilkes County to Frank Austin and Connie Faye Walker Hartley. He was a member and deacon of the Sharon Walker Baptist Church. He retired as co-owner of Hartley Brothers Sawmill.
He was preceded in death by his parents; one great-grandchild, Johnny Luna; and five brothers, Phillip Hartley, Tommy Hartley, David Hartley, Danny Hartley, and Charles Hartley.
He is survived by his wife, Betty Lou Johnson Hartley, of the home; three daughters, Sandra Pearson and husband, Greg, of Boomer, Diana Roark and husband, Ernie, of Boomer, and Lisa Greene and husband, Michael, also of Boomer; five grandchildren, Stephanie and Adam Eller, Jonathan and Jennifer Pearson, Brandon and Samantha Roark, Sheena and John Luna, and Justin and Erica Greene; and thirteen great-grandchildren, Cameron Pearson, Cole Pearson, Lindsay Eller, Salem Eller, Peyton Eller, Jeffery Church, Haley Roark, Madison Roark, Breanna Roark, Amy Roark, Shon Luna, Macie Greene and Paisley Greene; two sisters, Sue Soots and husband, Andy, of Wilkesboro and Teresa Triplett of Ferguson; and three brothers, James Hartley and wife, Janet, of Wilkesboro, Mike Hartley and wife, Wanda, of Ferguson, and Mark Hartley and wife Caren, of Boomer.
Flowers will be accepted or memorials made to Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice, 126 Executive Drive, Suite 100, Wilkesboro NC 28697.
Ned Hall, 78
Mr. Ned Clark Hall, age 78 of Boomer, husband of Barbara Cottrell Hall, died Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Danby House in Winston-Salem.
Mr. Hall was born in Wilkes County to William Clyde and Virgie Siana Triplett Hall. He was a member of Rock Springs Baptist Church in Darby.
He was preceded in death by his parents and three siblings, Helen Hall, Kathie Hall and Billy Drake Hall.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara Cottrell Hall, of the home; two daughters, Kayren Michele Hall and husband, Skip Erb, of Bluffton, SC, and Shana Marlise Hall of Ferguson; and one son, Victor Karl Hall or Wilkesboro.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Pruitt Health Hospice, 924 Main Street, Suite 100, North Wilkesboro NC 28659.
No services will be held.
Lisa Brown, 46
Lisa Combs Brown, age 46, of North Wilkesboro, passed away Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Forsyth Medical Center. She was born October 25, 1971 in Wilkes County to Merrill and Wanda Stanley Combs. Mrs. Brown loved her dogs, Sephi, Lucy, Sam and Marley and her favorite color was purple from childhood. She was preceded in death by her father.
Surviving are her husband, Donnie Brown; sons, Timothy Wayne Bell and wife Amber, Rusty Shane Bell all of North Wilkesboro; her mother, Wanda Stanley Combs of Wilkesboro; brother, Travis Combs and wife Vanessa of North Wilkesboro; sisters, Teresa Watson and husband Chris of North Wilkesboro, Rebecca Combs and Javier of Wilkesboro; grandchildren, Addyson Bell, Alyvia Bell, Aylon Bell; several nieces and nephews.
Funeral service were held August 29, at Miller Funeral Chapel with Rev. Mark Barlow and Pastor Tommy Mikeal officiating. Burial followed in Combs Family Cemetery in Hays. Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to ASPCA, PO Box 96929, Washington, DC 20090-6929.
With the loss of Lisa's life, Lisa will live on as she was able to save two lives by being a donor.
Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.
James Lankford, 71
Rev. James Edward Lankford, age 71, of Wilkesboro, NC passed away Friday, August 24, 2018 at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston- Salem. He was a graduate from Holmes Bible College with a Holmes Seminary Degree; and a US Air Force Veteran. He was also a Home Care Aide. Rev. Lankford was born June 26, 1947 in Wilkes County, NC to Cansue and Vernie Cannon Lankford. Rev. Lankford was preceded in death by his parents; brothers, Clyde, William and Floyd Lankford; and sister, Nina Call.
Rev. Lankford is survived by his sister; Juanita O'Neal of Wilkesboro; several nieces, nephews; and cousins.
A private family service will be held.
Miller Funeral Services are in charge of the arrangements.
Michael Almond, 79
Mr. Michael "Mickey" Almond, age 79 of North Wilkesboro, passed away Thursday, August 23, 2018 at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston Salem.
Funeral services were held August 27th, at Baptist Home Baptist Church with Rev. David Jones, Rev. Darrell Tate and Rev. Mark O. Hollar officiating. Burial with Military Honors by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1142 was in the church cemetery.
Mr. Almond was born August 9, 1939 in Raleigh County WV to Levi Garfield Almond and Jenny Sheets Almond. He was retired from Wilkes ADAP where he worked as a Job Coach. Mr. Almond was a veteran of the US Army.
In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by four sisters and seven brothers.
Mr. Almond is survived by his wife of 57 years; Loretha Sue Meadows Almond of the home, two daughters; Lori Almond Miller and husband Shannon of North Wilkesboro, Alecia Almond Prevette and husband Jason of Wilkesboro, one son Timothy Michael Almond and wife Rita of North Wilkesboro, six grandchildren; Arynn Minton Anderson and husband Shaun, Lacy Story Greene and husband Jarrett, Jenna Mitchell Walker and husband Josh, Jared Michael Story and wife Laken, Graylen Miles Mitchell and Earl Johnson, Jr., four great grandchildren; Mason Joshua Walker, EmberLynn Terra Greene, Trentyn Levi Walker and Zolie Trapper Anderson, a sister; Carol Almond Bailey and husband Dicky of Christiansburg, VA and a brother; Donnie Almond and wife; Kitty of Charleston, SC.
Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to ADAP PO Box 968 North Wilkesboro, NC 28659 or Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice 126 Executive Drive Suite 110 Wilkesboro, NC 28697.
Minnie Joyner, 85
Mrs. Minnie Sue Prevette Joyner, age 85 of Ronda, passed away Thursday, August 23, 2018 at her home.
Funeral services were held August 26, at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Clingman with Rev. Dennis Murphy and Mrs. Peggy Smith officiating. Mrs. Joyner was born March 17, 1933 in Wilkes County to Lewis and Kizzie Anderson Prevette. She was a member of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Clingman and was retired from Chatham Country Store.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband; James (Jim) Joyner a grandson; Justin Alexander, two sisters and seven brothers.
She is survived by a daughter; Patricia Alexander of Moravian Falls, two sons; Scott Joyner of Ronda and Darryl Joyner and wife Eleisa of Ronda, three grandchildren; Sarah Alexander of Winston Salem, Shannon Joyner Hall and husband Darrell of Thurmond and Andrea Joyner Younger and husband Andrew of Ronda and two sisters in law; Alma Prevette and Polly Prevette.
Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Building Pledge 3982 Clingman Road Ronda, NC 28670 or the American Cancer Society PO Box 9 North Wilkesboro, NC 28659.
The family wishes to express their gratitude to Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice and especially Samantha Billings. The family would also like to thank Long Term Caregiver Sara Wiles.
Ray Dillard, 56
Mr. Ray Dillard age 56 of North Wilkesboro, passed away August 23, 2018 at Select Specialty Hospital in Greensboro.
Funeral services were held August 27th, at Reins Sturdivant Chapel with Rev. Danny Dillard officiating. Burial was in the Osborne Family Cemetery. Mr. Dillard was born January 30, 1962 in Wilkes County to James Vestal and Dorothy Ann Bowers Dillard. He was a truck driver for Wayne Farms.
He was preceded in death by his parents and two brothers; Jimmy Holbrook and Clifford Holbrook.
Mr. Dillard is survived by his wife; Sandra Jean Roten Dillard of the home, two daughters; Cassandra Kay Dillard of Harmony and Elizabeth Ann Kilby of the home, a son; Ray Eugene Dillard of the home, five grandchildren; James Ray Dillard, Hailey Madison Foster, Dixie Ava Lynn Kilby, Kristalin Hermione Avya Kilby and Isabella Nevaeh Smith, three sisters; Verna Faye Johnson of North Wilkesboro, Laura Ann Palmer of North Wilkesboro and Rose May Childress of Moravian Falls, four brothers; Lester Eugene Dillard of Austin, Cecil Holbrook of Millers Creek, Robert Holbrook of North Wilkesboro and AC Holbrook of Austin.
Flowers will be accepted.
Doris Hunter, 79
Doris L. Hunter, age 79, of New Castle, DE, formerly of Bear, passed away peacefully at Christiana Hospital on Thursday, August 23, 2018.
Born in North Wilkesboro, NC, Doris was the daughter of the late Samuel Eakey and Molly Cordova (Blackburn) Lankford. She worked for First USA Bank as a credit collector until her retirement. She was a member of the Red Hat Society group. Her husband of 59 years, Charles Glenn Hunter, Jr., predeceased her in 2015.
Doris will be dearly missed by her son and daughter-in-law, Chuck and Roxanne Hunter of Cape May County, NJ; and her daughters and sons-in-law, Dianne and Conrad Wachowski of New Castle, DE and Casana and Eric Zistl of Oldman's Township, NJ. Also surviving are five grandchildren and their spouses, Gwen and Michael Grant, Jarrod and Camme Wachowski, Melissa and Chris Kazmach, Rachel and Bryan Schuler and Natalie Hunter; three great grandchildren, Bradley, Austin and Brayden; and two brothers and sisters-in-law, George and Jackie Lankford of North Wilkesboro, NC and William and Margie Lankford of Lincoln, NC.
She is also predeceased by sister, Lovella Lankford Lovette, and bothers Sammie Lankford and John Lankford, all of Wilkes County.
All services are private and held at the convenience of the family. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to Red Lion United Methodist Church, 1545 Church Road, Bear, DE. 19707.
Margie Ware, 83
Margie Lee Allen Ware, age 83, of Millers Creek, passed away Thursday, August 23, 2018 at her home. Mrs. Ware was born November 1, 1934 in Cleveland County to Riley and Florence Elizabeth Ledford Allen. She was a
member of Chestnut Grove Baptist Church. Margie was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Samuel Eugene Ware; two brothers, Burnie Allen and D.C. Allen; and a sister, Emogene Dixon.
Surviving are her children, Barbara Faye Johnson of Millers Creek, Samuel Eugene Ware, Jr. and wife Lynne of Moravian Falls, Joseph Lawrence Ware and Nancy Elizabeth Ware Osborne and husband David all of Millers Creek; sisters, Phyllis Ann McSwain of Cherryville, N.C. and Patricia Elaine Barrett of Florida; grandchildren, Jeremy Daniel Bowlin, Matthew Bowlin, Brandon Ware, Katey Smithey, Vanessa Osborne, Brooklyn Osborne, Abby Osborne, Kaitlyn Ware, Dalton Ware; and great grandchildren, Corbin Ware, Colton Anderson, Alainna Johnson, Aria Barr, Annie Wilcox.
Funeral service was Wednesday, August 29, at Miller Funeral Chapel with Pastor Tom Moore officiating. Burial was in Mountlawn Memorial Park. Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Mtn. Valley Hospice, 688 North Bridge Street, Elkin, NC 28621. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.
Hazel Lowe, 83
Mrs. Hazel Mae Miller Lowe, age 83 of Moravian Falls, passed away Wednesday, August 22, 2108 at her home.
Funeral services were held August 25th, at Reins Sturdivant Funeral Home Chapel with Rev. Brandon Lowe, Rev. Eddie Tharpe, Rev. David Wellborn and Rev. Sherrill Wellborn officiating. Burial was in Scenic Memorial Gardens. Mrs. Lowe was born December 24, 1934 in Wilkes County to Dock Robert Miller and Rutha Church Miller. Hazel retired from Tyson Foods where she worked as a Food Inspector for the USDA. She loved her children and grandchildren and was a faithful member of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. She also had a deep love for Southern Gospel Music and traveled often with the Faith Trio and The Joyful Sounds. She was an avid baseball fan and spent her free time cheering on The Atlanta Braves.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband; Claude Edward Lowe, six sisters; Clara Cozart, Florence Miller, Nora Miller, Emmer Miller, Vernell Miller and Esther Thornburg and a brother; Glenn Miller, Sr.
Mrs. Lowe is survived by three sons; Dwight Lowe and wife Wanda of Wilkesboro, Gerald Lowe and wife Judy of Boomer and Sherrill Lowe and wife Wanda of Wilkesboro, eight grandchildren, nine great grandchildren and one great -great grandchild.
Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Piedmont Triad Chapter 216 W Market Street Suite B Greensboro, NC 27401 or Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice 126 Executive Drive Suite 110 Wilkesboro, NC 28697.
William Myers, 76
William Rubin Myers, age 76, of North Wilkesboro, passed away Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at SECU Hospice Care Center in Yadkinville. He was born December 29, 1941 in Wilkes County to Percy Alexander and Violet Cothren Myers. Mr. Myers was employed with Holly Farms/Tyson Foods as a supervisor for 42 years. He was preceded in death by his parents; son, Kenneth Wayne Myers, Sr.; and brothers, Paul Ernest Myers and Percy Junior Myers.
Surviving are his daughter, Pamela Bailey and husband James of North Wilkesboro; sister, Johnsie Mae Sidden of Traphill; brother, Rev. Don Myers of North Wilkesboro; four grandchildren, Michael Evan Myers, Anthony Ray Bailey, Miranda Leigh Bailey, Kenneth Wayne Myers, Jr.; three great grandchildren, Sophie Marie Bailey, Isaac Jordan Bailey, Madelyn Grace Myers; a host of nieces and nephews.
Memorial service was held , August 31, at Miller Funeral Chapel with Rev. Julius Blevins officiating. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the family. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.
Linda Wiles, 59
Mrs. Linda Jean Church Wiles, age 59 wife of Ricky Joe Wiles of Millers Creek passed away Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at Wake Forest Baptist-Wilkes Medical Center.
Funeral services was held August 25, at Rein-Sturdivant Chapel with Rev. Clarence Cloer and Rev. Jerry Blevins officiating. Burial will be in Haymeadow Baptist Church Cemetery.
Mrs. Wiles was born June 13, 1959 in Wilkes County to Pressley Brown Church and Roxie May Fraizer Church. She was a member of Friendly Grove Baptist Church.
She was preceded in death by her parents and a brother; Bill Church and brother-in-law; Ernest Wyatt.
She is survived by her husband; Ricky Joe Wiles of the home, daughter; Alisha Wiles of Millers Creek, three grandchildren; Mason Reynolds, Kaylea Jones, Brian Jones, four sisters; Peggy Reynolds and husband Lance, Novella Houck and husband Don, Drucella Joines and husband James, Rosella Wyatt, two brothers; Rex Church and wife Lessie, Edward Church and wife Marlene.
Wayne H. Pybas, 98
Wayne H. Pybas, 98, most currently of Wilkesboro, NC, went home to be with the Lord on Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at Wilkes Regional Medical Center in North Wilkesboro. Mr. Pybas was born on July 26, 1920 in Warrens Bend, Texas, to Jordan and Lelia Pybas. In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his wife of 57 years, Norma Woods Pybas, and his 9 brothers and sisters.
Mr. Pybas was a veteran of the United States Army Air Corp and United States Air Force, where he served in WWII, Korea, and other locations for 22 years. He was a devoted husband and was his wife's caregiver for the last 25 years of her life. He loved fishing, gardening, and reminiscing about his WWII experiences. He was generous with his time in helping others and helping his great grandchildren to afford a higher education.
Mr. Pybas is survived by his son, Barry W. Pybas and wife, Polly A. of Wilkesboro, NC; three grandsons, Geoffrey W. Pybas and his family of Broken Arrow, OK, Timothy H. Pybas and his family of Palatka, FL, and Corey J. Mason of Rising Sun, OH; granddaughter, Leanne M. Brewster and her family of Sunbury, OH; and 9 great grandchildren.
Interment will be held at Florida National Cemetery, Bushnell, FL, at a later date, with veteran's honors. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to: Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, 239 Champion/Mt. Pleasant Rd., Wilkesboro, NC 28697.
The Pybas family would like to extend a very special thanks and appreciation to Brenda Church, Maria Greene, and the rest of their care team for the wonderful help they gave Wayne in his final months.
Della McPeak, 96
Della (Rhea) McPeak, age 96, of Wilkesboro, passed away Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at Westwood Hills Nursing and Rehab Center. She was born January 5, 1922 in Watauga County to Samuel Smith and Maggie Miller Church. Della was a member of Mt. Paran Baptist Church in Deep Gap and enjoyed gardening. She was preceded in death by her parents; her husband, Arthur James McPeak; numerous brothers and sisters; daughters-in-law, Barbara Hodges Waters and Paulette Adkins Waters.
Surviving are her sons, Vernon Waters of Boone, Jim Waters of Millers Creek, Bill Arvin Waters and wife Neida of Painesville, Ohio, Arthur McPeak, Jr. and wife Angela of Lenoir; daughter, Janet Rhea Waters Huffman and husband Carl of Purlear; grandchildren, Lori Waters Corbin and husband Carroll of Boone, Tony Waters of Wilkesboro, Rickie Waters and wife Sylvia of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Andrew Waters of Painesville, Ohio, Rhonda Waters Soppitt and husband Todd of Leroy, Ohio, Penny Waters Krieg of Painesville, Miranda McPeak Hammond and husband Matthew of Lenoir, Kristina McPeak Reeves and husband Will of Hickory, Laci K. McPeak of Lenoir, Carla Huffman Myers and husband Ralph of North Wilkesboro, Angela Rhea Foster and husband J.D. of Purlear; fourteen great grandchildren; and six great great grandchildren.
Funeral service was August 25, at Mt. Paran Baptist Church in Deep Gap with Rev. Rick Cornejo officiating. Burial followed in the church cemetery. Flowers will be accepted. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.
Aubra Allison
Mrs. Aubra "Arbie" Della Turner Allison, age 78 of Wilkesboro passed away Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at her home.
Mrs. Allison was born October 10, 1939 in Ashe County to Paul John and Ruth Lillian Jones Turner. Mrs. Allison was a supervisor at First Union Bank, an active member of the 4H Club, where she served as Vice President of North Carolina 4H Volunteers.
In addition to her parents she was preceded in death by a sister; Betty Jones
She is survived by two sons; David Allison and wife Della and Robert Allison all of Wilkesboro, two grandchildren; Robert Allison II and Jonathan Owens and one brother; Hubert Turner and wife Sue of Georgia.
George McNeil
Mr. George Franklin McNeil, 1128 Winkler Mill Road, Wilkesboro, NC died Tuesday, August 21, 2018 at Wake Forest Baptist-Wilkes Medical Center. He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife; the former Joyce Dancy and an infant son. He is survived by one brother; Commodore C. McNeil, Jr. of Imperial, CA, one son; Kevin L. McNeil and wife Denise Lackey McNeil of Mooresville, NC and two grandsons; Drew McNeil and Cole McNeil.
Mr. McNeil was born in a rural farmhouse near Ebony, VA on May 5, 1934, son of Commodore C. McNeil and Eva Clary McNeil. In 1940, he moved with his family to Wilkes County and settled in the Charity Church Community between Millers Creek and Purlear. He graduated as valedictorian of the Millers Creek High School Class of 1952. He received a Congressional Appointment to Naval Reserve Officer's Training Corps but was not able to pass the physical examination.
Mr. McNeil began working as a trainee for The Northwestern Bank immediately after graduation, when it was a small regional bank with branches in 12 towns in Northwestern North Carolina. It became a multi-billion-dollar financial organization with more than 230 branches throughout the state. He worked in all areas of the bank and built a career by devising ways to make those parts work together more effectively and efficiently. In the late 1960s, he was a member of the multi-state steering committee that overcame the competitive concerns and developed the technical specifications and operating procedures that allowed an association of banks to introduce Master Charge (now MasterCard) credit cards to the Atlantic States. He served on the Board of Directors of NorCACHA (North Carolina Automated Clearing House Association.) He chaired the Operations Committee of that organization and was responsible for writing the first User's Manual that guided banks in North Carolina and South Carolina to begin to originate and receive Direct Deposit and Direct Debit (paperless) transactions. He was also on the Board of Directors of NorCaPS (North Carolina Payment Systems) when that organization developed the technical and operational framework that made possible the multi-state deployment of shared ATMs and merchant point-of-sale terminals. He was Vice President of the Automation Division of The Northwestern Bank for twelve years. He later worked in the Regulatory Compliance Department of the Bank, and then developed the concept, wrote procedures for, started and managed Central Installment Loan Operations for the Bank. When Northwestern merged with the First Union National Bank, he continued on a part-time consulting basis and implemented major computer assisted systems for First Union in Charlotte, Atlanta and Jacksonville; one dealing with computer-indexed micrographics and one dealing with computer-assisted collections. He retired in 1989.
As a condition to his initial employment with the bank, Mr. McNeil joined the North Carolina National Guard in 1952. He served seven years as an enlisted man, achieving the rank of SFC E-6, then was in OCS Class 1 of the North Carolina Military Academy. He attended Basic Infantry Officers course at Ft. Benning, GA, and received his officer's commission. He held various positions in the National Guard units in Asheville, Boone, North Wilkesboro, Lenoir and Winston-Salem. He served six years as Commanding Officer of the local National Guard Company, leading it through a change-of-branch reorganization - from Infantry to Transportation (Heavy). His last assignment was as a S3 (Supply Officer) of the 540th Transportation Bn. He transferred to Inactive Reserve in 1973 with the rank of Captain and retired in 1999.
Before becoming deeply involved in National Guard and regional bank-related trade and research organizations, Mr. McNeil was in the Jaycees and was Chairman of the Local Board of West Wilkes High School for several years.
After retirement, Mr. McNeil helped his wife in her genealogical pursuits. Together, they tried to locate every burial site in the county, document the location and record who was buried there. Undoubtedly, there are some abandoned graveyards that they did not visit, but they recorded more than a 52,000 graves in more than 770 graveyards in the county. Years of research resulted in determining the name of the parents and spouse(s) of about 85% of these people. Mr. McNeil adapted personal computer applications to store this information and make it accessible in a variety of ways that assist those doing genealogical research on people who have lived in Wilkes County. They also abstracted and indexed many types of local public records, such as Census enumerations, marriage licenses, delayed birth certificates, land grants, the Grandfather Book, etc. In 2014, the computer files and research material became the Joyce D. McNeil and George Franklin McNeil Family History Collection at the Wilkes Heritage Museum in Wilkesboro.
Mr. McNeil was active in Pleasant Home Baptist Church and Brushy Mountain Baptist Association until 2003, when he joined Wilkesboro United Methodist Church. There, he has served as Church Treasurer, Chair of the Endowment Committee, as a member of various other committees and as a lay speaker.
The family requests no food or flowers. Memorials may be made to Wilkes Heritage Museum for the McNeil Family History Room, PO Box 935, Wilkesboro, N C 28697.Funeral services were held August 26, at Reins-Sturdivant Chapel with Rev. Paul Hugger and Rev. Karen Roberts officiating.
Burial with Military Honors by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1142 will be in Pleasant Home Baptist Church Cemetery.
John Beadenkopf, Jr.
Mr. John William Beadenkopf, Jr., age 73 of Moravian Falls passed away Monday, August 20, 2018 at his home.
Funeral services will be held 3:00 PM Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Crossfire United Methodist Church with Rev. Dr. Alan Rice officiating. The family will receive friends from 2:00 until 3:00 PM prior to the service at the church.
Mr. Beadenkopf was born June 7, 1945 in Baltimore, MD. to Johnny William and Mary Elizabeth Wharry Beadenkopf, Sr.
He was preceded in death by his parents, one son; John William Beadenkopf III, and two step-sons; Travis and Harold Hamby.
He is survived by his wife; Judith Elizabeth Minton Beadenkopf of the home, one daughter; Mallie Cookus and husband Lloyd of Baltimore, MD, one son; Charles Beadenkopf and wife Mary, two step-sons; Gary Hamby and wife Maria and Phillip Hamby all of Moravian Falls, ten grandchildren; Christina Taylor, Travis Hamby, Patrick Hamby, Scottie Hamby, Chelsea Woodworth, Charles Beadenkopf, II, Joshua Beadenkopf, Nevaeh Beadenkopf, David Beadenkopf, Travis Beadenkopf, five great grandchildren; Jaydon Taylor, Brandi Taylor, Athal Woodworth, Drakkar Nelson and one sister; Patsy Phillips and husband Stanley of Baltimore, MD.
Flowers will be accepted or memorial may be made to Crossfire United Methodist Church, 3200 Statesville Road, North Wilkesboro, NC 28659
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From the North Country, following a sell-out, critically acclaimed run at The Old Vic. Brought to life by an exceptional company of actors and musicians, award-winning playwright Conor McPherson beautifully weaves the iconic songbook of Bob Dylan into this new show full of hope, heartbreak and soul.
Duluth, Minnesota. 1934. A community living on a knife-edge huddle together in the local guesthouse. The owner, Nick, owes more money than he can ever repay, his wife Elizabeth is losing her mind and their daughter Marianne is carrying a child no one will account for. And, when a preacher selling bibles and a boxer looking for a comeback show up in the middle of the night, things start to spiral beyond the point of no return…
Girl from the North Country features a stellar cast: Sheila Atim plays Marianne Laine. Recent theatre credits include Babette’s Feast (Coronet Printroom), The Tempest, Henry IV and Julius Ceasar as part of the Shakespeare Trilogy (Donmar Warehouse), Hopelessly Devoted (Paines Plough) and Les Blancs (National Theatre). Other theatre credits include Volpone, Love’s Sacrifice, The Jew of Malta (RSC), Black Lives Black Words – The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre), Rachel (Finborough Theatre) and Klook’s Last Stand (Park Theatre). Sheila’s television credits include I Live With Models and the upcoming second series of Harlots.
Hannah Azuonye is part of the ensemble. This production marks her professional and West End debut. Her theatre credits include Thick Skin (Poor Michelle Theatre Company) which won the Samuel French New Play Award at the National Student Drama Festival. Her recent screen credits include The Things I Will Not Miss.
Ross Dawes is part of the ensemble. His theatre credits include Charlie & the Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Shrek The Musical (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), Passion (Donmar Warehouse), Spamalot (Palace Theatre) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (London Palladium), Starlight Express (Apollo Victoria), Saturday Night Fever (London Palladium), Evita (UK Tour) and Singing in the Rain (UK Tour). His television includes Victoria Wood’s Midlife Christmas and The Bill.
Mary Doherty is part of the ensemble. Her recent theatre credits include Twelfth Night (National Theatre), Henry IV Trilogy, Anne Boleyn, All’s Well That Ends Well, Henry VIII (The Globe), Inherit the Wind (Old Vic), Merry Wives the Musical (RSC), Two Cities (Salisbury Playhouse), Avenue Q (West End), Grease (UK Tour). Her film and television credits include Shakespeare Uncovered and True Stories. Her radio credits include How to Have a Perfect Marriage and The Saudi Prince and the Pauper.
Bronagh Gallagher plays Mrs Burke. Theatre credits include The Faith Machine, Dublin Carol (Royal Court), Every Good Boy Deser ves Favour and War Horse (National Theatre). Film credits include Sherlock Holmes, Tamara Drewe, Tristan & Isolde, Last Chance Harvey, The Commitments, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Television credits include You Me and the Apocalypse, The Street, The Accused.
David Ganly plays Mr. Burke. His theatre credits include On Blueberry Hill (Dublin Theatre Festival), Once (Olympia Theatre Dublin), Lonesome West (Tron Theatre), The Plough & the Stars (Abbey Theatre Dublin and Irish & US Tour), Shakespeare in Love (Noel Coward Theatre), Threepenny Opera (Gate Theatre), King Lear (Theatre Royal Bath), Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith) Macbeth (Sheffield Crucible), The Lonesome West (Druid Theatre, The Royal Court, Sydney Festival and Lyceum, Broadway) Of Mice and Men (The Watermill), The Wizard of Oz (London Palladium), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Young Vic)for which David received an OFFIE nomination for Best Actor, Chicago (Cambridge Theatre London), The Weir (Gate Theatre), Translations (National Theatre) and The Full Monty (Prince of Wales Theatre). His film and television credits include Citizen Charlie, Sunset Song, Body of Lies, Hippie Hippie Shake, Dorothy Mills, Widow’s Peak and Space Truckers.
Shirley Henderson plays Elizabeth Laine. Shirley’s career spans film, television and theatre; her extensive theatre credits include Shining Souls (The Old Vic), The Maiden Stone, Lions in the Streets (Hampstead Theatre), My Mother Said I Never Should (Royal Court), Entertaining Strangers, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest (National Theatre), Eurydice (Chichester Festival), Anna Weiss (Whitehall Theatre), Romeo & Juliet (Citizens Theatre) and The Life of Stuff (Traverse Theatre). On screen, Shirley is best known for films Trainspotting, Bridget Jones and the Harry Potter series, and for her roles in television dramas Frozen and Southcliffe, she won the BAFTA Scotland Award for ‘Best Actress’ in both. Other television credits include Happy Valley, Jamaica Inn, Bob Servant Independent, Death In Paradise, Treasure Island, Crimson Petal and the White, Marple: Murder is Easy, Dr Who, The Taming Of The Shrew and Dirty Filthy Love, and her other film credits include Okja, Never Steady, Never Still, Love Song: Wolf Alice, Urban Hymn, The Tale Of Tales, The Caravan, Set Fire To The Stars, Filth, The Look Of Love, Anna Karenina, Everyday, Wild Child and Marie Antoinette.
Ciaran Hinds plays Nick Laine. Ciaran has worked extensively for the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Gate Theatre and Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Theatre credits include Hamlet (Barbican), The Night Alive, Assassins (Donmar Warehouse), Juno and The Paycock, Burnt By The Sun, Machinal (National Theatre), Closer (National Theatre and Broadway), The Yalta Game (Gate Theatre), Our Few and Evil Days (Abbey Theatre Dublin), Simpatico (Royal Court) and Richard III (Royal Shakespeare Company). Broadway credits include The Crucible, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof and The Seafarer. Film credits include Justice League, Red Sparrow, Woman Walks Ahead, Bleed for This, Silence, Frozen, The Woman in Black, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Debt, The Eclipse, There Will Be Blood, Miami Vice, Munich, Road to Perdition, Veronica Guerin, Calendar Girls, Tombraider II, The Sun of all Fears and Persuasion. Television credits include The Terror, Game of Thrones, Political Animals, Above Suspicion, Rome, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jane Eyre and Persuasion.
Adam James plays Dr. Walker. His recent theatre credits include Consent (National Theatre), An Enemy of the People (Chichester Festival Theatre), Bull (Young Vic), My Child (Royal Court), 13 (National Theatre) and King Charles III for which he received the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting actor. Further theatre credits include Rapture, Blister, Burn and Tiger Country (Hampstead Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (Wyndhams Theatre), The Pride (Broadway) for which he received Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role, Gethsemane, Blood & Gifts (National Theatre), Now or Later (Royal Court) and King Lear (Royal Exchange). His television credits include Home From Home, Eric, Ernie and Me, Doctor Foster, King Charles III, Endeavour, Grantchester, Coalition, The Game, The Crimson Field, Law & Order, Family Tree, Miranda, Doctor Who, Hustle, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Ashes to Ashes, Extras, England Expects, Love Soup, The Lost Battalion and Band of Brothers. His film credits include Johnny English III, Hunter Killer, A Little Chaos, Last Chance Harvey, Mother of Tears and Road To Guantanamo.
Claudia Jolly plays Katherine Draper. A recent graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Gold Medial recipient). Claudia was recently seen in the BBC adaptation of NW and is soon to appear in the film On Chesil Beach. Claudia plays Mariarosa in the BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Ela Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.
Karl Johnson plays Mr Perry. His recent theatre credits include King Lear (Old Vic), Hamlet (Barbican Centre), Fathers and Sons (Donmar Warehouse), Barking in Essex (Wyndham’s Theatre), Noises Off (Old Vic and West End), Frankenstein, The Seafarer, Tales From The Vienna Wood, Scenes From the Big Picture, The Walls (National Theatre). The Absence of Women (Lyric Theatre, Belfast), Almost Nothing/At the Table, Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, This is a Chair and The Night Heron (Royal Court). His television credits include King Lear, Mum, Born to Kill, Dickensian, Plebs, Atlantis, Call the Midwife, Merlin, The Trial of Tony Blair and Rules of Engagement. His film credits include Peterloo, Kaleidoscope, Mr Turner, The Deep Blue Sea and Close My Eyes.
Arinzé Kene plays Joe Scott. His theatre credits include One Night In Miami (Donmar Warehouse), Decade (Headlong), Been So Long (Young Vic Theatre), The Lion King (Lyceum Theatre), Daddy Cool (Shaftesbury Theatre) and Torn (Arcola Theatre). Arinzé’s television credits include Crazyhead, Our Girl, Youngers, EastEnders and Informer. His film credits include Been So Long, The Pass, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Freestyle.
Emmanuel Kojo is part of the ensemble. His recent theatre credits include Oklahoma! (BBC Proms 2017), Twelfth Night (National Theatre), Show Boat (Sheffield Theatre, West End), Kiss Me Kate (Opera North) and The Scottsboro Boys (Garrick Theatre and Young Vic). His television credits include Oklahoma! and Walliams and Friends.
Debbie Kurup plays Mrs Neilsen. Her theatre credits include The Threepenny Opera (National Theatre), The Bodyguard (Adelphi Theatre), Chicago (Cambridge Theatre and Adelphi Theatre), Sister Act (London Palladium), West Side Story (Prince of Wales Theatre London), Tonight’s The Night (Victoria Palace), Rent (Prince of Wales Theatre and UK), Boogie Nights (Savoy Theatre), Anything Goes (Sheffield Theatres and UK tour), Jack and the Beanstalk (Hackney Empire), East (Leicester Curve), Fame (UK tour), Guys and Dolls (Sheffield Theatres), Pal Joey (Chichester Festival Theatre) and Poison (Tricycle Theatre). Debbie’s film credits include 28 Weeks Later and Hollow.
Finbar Lynch plays Reverend Marlowe. His extensive theatre credits include The Lady From the Sea (Donmar Warehouse), Richard III (Almeida Theatre), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Hothouse, Antony and Cleopatra, Not About Nightingales and King Lear (National Theatre), Antigone (Barbican Centre / World Tour), The Silence of the Sea (Trafalgar Studios), Translations (Donmar Warehouse), Desire Under The Elms, The Big Fellah (Lyric Hammersmith), The Fairy Queen (Glyndebourne / Paris / New York), The Duchess of Malfi and Dancing at Lughnasa (The Old Vic), The Fastest Clock in the Universe (Hampstead Theatre / Leicester Curve), Portrait of a Lady and A Doll’s House (Bath Theatre), Three Sisters on Hope Street (Hampstead Theatre / Liverpool Everyman), Ghosts (Gate Theatre), The Tempest, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, The Alchemist, The Virtuoso, Amphibians, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (RSC), The Birthday Party (Duchess Theatre) and Three Sisters (Royal Court / Gate Theatre Dublin). His television credits include Foyle’s War, DCI Banks, Breathless, Game of Thrones, Silk, Richard II, Proof, Dalziel and Pascoe, Waking the Dead, Red Cap, Atilla the Hun, Second Sight, Mind Games, Small World, Between the Lines and Glenroe. Film credits include The World We Knew, Black 47, Property of the State, Suffragette, Child 44, Departure, The Numbers Station, Matilde, To Kill a King, Lost Batallion, King Lear, Scold’s Bridle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Schooner and Rawhead Rex.
Sam Reid plays Gene Laine. His theatre credits include ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (West Yorkshire Playhouse) and One Night In November (Belgrade Theatre). Sam’s television credits include Tennison, Codes of Conduct, Astronauts Wives Club, Miss Marple: Greenshaw’s Folly, Hatfields & McCoys, Whitechapel, Endeavour, Spooks, MI-5 and All Saints. His film credits include Limehouse Golem, 2:22, Despite the Falling Snow, Serena, Tigers, The Riot Club, ’71, Belle and The Railway Man.
Jack Shalloo plays Elias Burke. Theatre credits include Groundhog Day (The Old Vic), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Theatre Royal Drury Lane), The Snow Queen (The Nuffield Theatre), A Clockwork Orange (Stratford East Theatre Royal), Goodbye Barcelona (Arcola Theatre) and Our House (Birmingham Rep and Original UK Tour). Jack’s television credits include People Just Do Nothing, Dickensian, The Interceptor, Doctors, Miranda Hart’s New Year’s Eve Sketch Show, The Man Who Loved The Lakes, EastEnders, Out Of Control, Holby City, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and The Bill. His film credits include Fit, Kick-Off and Bashment.
Conor McPherson is an acclaimed writer and director. He was born in Dublin in 1971 and attended University College Dublin where he began to write and direct. Stage plays include Rum & Vodka, The Good Thief, This Lime Tree Bower, St Nicholas, The Weir (Olivier, Evening Standard, and Critics Circle Awards), Dublin Carol, Port Authority, Shining City (Tony Award nominated), The Seafarer (Tony, Olivier and Evening Standard Award nominated), The Veil, and The Night Alive (New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Olivier, Evening Standard and Lucille Lortel Award nominated).
Writer & Director Conor McPherson
Music & Lyrics Bob Dylan
Designer Rae Smith
Orchestrator, Arrangements & Musical Supervisor Simon Hale
Lighting Mark Henderson
Sound Simon Baker
Movement Director Lucy Hind
Casting Director Jessica Ronane CDG
Noël Coward Theatre
St Martin’s Lane
London WC2N 4AU
http://ift.tt/2zcfsTa London Theatre 1
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Ernie Barnes
Ernest Eugene Barnes Jr. (July 15, 1938 – April 27, 2009) was an American artist, well known for his unique style of elongation and movement. He was also a professional football player, actor and author.
Early life
Childhood
Ernest Barnes Jr. was born during the Jim Crow in "the bottom" community of Durham, North Carolina, near the Hayti District of the city. He had a younger brother, James (b. 1942), as well as a half-brother, Benjamin B. Rogers Jr. (1920–1970). Ernest Jr. was nicknamed "June". His father, Ernest E. Barnes Sr. (–1966), worked as a shipping clerk for Liggett Myers Tobacco Company. His mother, Fannie Mae Geer (1905–2004), oversaw the household staff for a prominent Durham attorney and local Board of Education member, Frank L. Fuller Jr.
On days when Fannie allowed "June" (Barnes' nickname to family and childhood friends) to accompany her to work, Mr. Fuller encouraged him to peruse the art books and listen to classical music. The young Ernest was intrigued and captivated by the works of master artists. By the time Barnes entered the first grade, he was familiar with the works of such masters as Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Rubens and Michelangelo. When he entered junior high school, he could appreciate, as well as decode, many of the cherished masterpieces within the walls of mainstream museums – although it would be many more years before he was allowed entrance because of segregation.
A self-described chubby and unathletic child, Barnes was taunted and bullied by classmates. He continually sought refuge in his sketchbooks, finding the less-traveled parts of campus away from other students. One day Ernest was drawing in his notebook in a quiet area of the school. He was discovered hiding there by the masonry teacher, Tommy Tucker, who was also the weightlifting coach and a former athlete. He was intrigued with Barnes' drawings, so he asked the aspiring artist about his grades and goals. Tucker shared his own experience of how bodybuilding improved his strength and outlook on life. That one encounter would begin Barnes' discipline and dedication that would permeate his life. In his senior year at Hillside High School, Barnes became the captain of the football team and state champion in the shot put.
College education
Barnes attended racially segregated schools. In 1956 he graduated from Hillside High School with 26 athletic scholarship offers. Segregation prevented him from attending nearby Duke University or the University of North Carolina. His mother promised him a car if he lived at home so he attended the all-Black North Carolina College at Durham (formerly North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University). At North Carolina College he majored in art on a full athletic scholarship. His track coach was Dr. Leroy T. Walker. Barnes played the football positions of tackle and center at NCC.
At age 18, on a college art class field trip to the newly desegregated North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, Barnes inquired where he could find "paintings by Negro artists". The docent responded, "Your people don't express themselves that way". 23 years later, in 1979, when Barnes returned to the museum for a solo exhibition, North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt attended.
In 1990 Barnes was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by North Carolina Central University.
In 1999 Barnes was bestowed "The University Award", the highest honor by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors.
Professional football
Baltimore Colts (1959–60)
In December 1959 Barnes was drafted in the 10th round by the then-World Champion Baltimore Colts. He was originally selected in the 8th-round by the Washington Redskins, who renounced the pick minutes after discovering he was a Negro.
Shortly after his 22nd birthday, while at the Colts training camp, Barnes was interviewed by N.P. Clark, sportswriter for the Baltimore News-Post newspaper. Until then Barnes was always known by his birth name, Ernest Barnes. But when Clark's article appeared on July 20, 1960, it referred to him as "Ernie Barnes," which changed his name and life forever.
Titans of New York (1960)
Barnes was the last cut of the Colts' training camp. After Baltimore released Barnes, the newly formed Titans of New York immediately signed him because the team had first option on any player released within the league.
Barnes loathed being on the Titans. He said, "(New York team organization) was a circus of ineptitude. The equipment was poor, the coaches not as knowledgeable as the ones in Baltimore. We were like a group of guys in the neighborhood who said let's pretend we're pros."
After their seventh game on October 9, 1960 at Jeppesen Stadium, his teammate Howard Glenn died. Barnes asked for his release two days later. The cause of Glenn's death was reported as a broken neck. However, Barnes and other teammates have long attributed it to heatstroke. In a later interview, Barnes said, "They never really said what he died of. (Coach) Sammy Baugh said he'd broken his neck in a game the Sunday before. But how could that be? How could he have hit in practice all week with a broken neck? What he died of, I think, was more like heat exhaustion. I told them I didn't want to play on a team like this."
San Diego Chargers (1960–62)
Barnes decided to accept a previous offer from Coach Al Davis at the Los Angeles Chargers. Barnes joined their team at mid-season as a member of their taxi squad. The following season in 1961 the team moved to San Diego. It was there Barnes met teammate Jack Kemp, and the two men would share a very close lifelong friendship.
During the off-seasons with the Chargers, Barnes was program director at San Diego's Southeast YMCA working with parolees from the California Youth Authority. He also worked as the Sports Editor for The Voice, a local San Diego newspaper, writing a weekly column called "A Matter of Sports."
Barnes also illustrated several articles for San Diego Magazine during the off-seasons in 1962 and 1963.
Barnes' first television interview as a professional football player and artist was in 1962 on The Regis Philbin Show on KGTV in San Diego. It was Philbin's first talk show. They would see each other again 45 years later when Philbin attended the tribute to Barnes in New York City.
Denver Broncos (1963–64)
Midway through Barnes' second season with the Chargers, he was cut after a series of injuries. He was then signed to the Denver Broncos.
Barnes was often fined by Denver Coach Jack Faulkner when caught sketching during team meetings. One of the sketches that he was fined $100 for sold years later for $1000.
Many times during breaks, Barnes would run off the field onto the sideline to give his offensive line coach Red Miller the scraps of paper of his sketches and notes.
"During a timeout you've got nothing to do – you're not talking – you're just trying to breathe, mostly. Nothing to take out that little pencil and write down what you saw. The shape of the linemen. The body language a defensive lineman would occupy... his posture... What I see when you pull. The reaction of the defense to your movement. The awareness of the lines within the movement, the pattern within the lines, the rhythm of movement. A couple of notes to me would denote an action... an image that I could instantly recreate in my mind. Some of those notes have been made into paintings. Quite a few, really."
On Barnes' 1964 Denver Broncos Topps football card he is shown wearing jersey #55 although he never played in that number. His jersey was #62.
Barnes was called "Big Rembrandt" by his Denver teammates. Coincidentally, Barnes and Rembrandt share the same birthday.
Canadian Football League
In 1965, after his second season with the Broncos, Barnes signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Canada. In the final quarter of their last exhibition game, Barnes fractured his right foot, effectively ending his professional football career.
Retirement
Shortly after his final football game, Barnes went to the 1965 NFL owners meeting in Houston in hopes of becoming the league's official artist. There he was introduced to New York Jets owner Sonny Werblin, who was intrigued by Barnes and his art. He paid for Barnes to bring his paintings to New York City. Later they met at a gallery and unbeknownst to Barnes, three art critics were there to evaluate his paintings. They told Werblin that Barnes was "the most expressive painter of sports since George Bellows."
In what was one of the most unusual posts in the history of the NFL, Werblin retained Barnes as a salaried player, but positioned him in front of the canvas, rather than on the football field. Werblin told Barnes, "You have more value to the country as an artist than as a football player."
Barnes' November 1966 debut solo exhibition, hosted by Werblin at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City was critically acclaimed and all the paintings sold.
In 1971 Barnes wrote a series of essays (illustrated with his own drawings) in the Gridiron newspaper titled "I Hate the Game I Love" (with Neil Amdur). These articles became the beginning manuscript of his autobiography, later-published in 1995 titled From Pads to Palette which chronicles his transition from professional football to his art career.
In 1993 Barnes was selected to the "Black College Football 100th Year All-Time Team" by the Sheridan Broadcasting Network.
Artwork
Barnes credits his college art instructor Ed Wilson for laying the foundation for his development as an artist. Wilson was a sculptor who instructed Barnes to paint from his own life experiences. "He made me conscious of the fact that the artist who is useful to America is one who studies his own life and records it through the medium of art, manners and customs of his own experiences."
All his life, Barnes was ambivalent about his football experience. In interviews and in personal appearances, Barnes said he hated the violence and the physical torment of the sport. However, his years as an athlete gave him unique, in-depth observations. "(Wilson) told me to pay attention to what my body felt like in movement. Within that elongation, there's a feeling. And attitude and expression. I hate to think had I not played sports what my work would look like."
Barnes sold his first painting "Slow Dance" at age 21 in 1959 for $90 to Boston Celtic Sam Jones. It was subsequently lost in a fire at Jones' home.
Numerous artists have been influenced by Barnes' art and unique style. Accordingly, several copyright infringement lawsuits have been settled and are currently pending.
Framing
Ernie Barnes framed his paintings with distressed wood in homage to his father. In his 1995 autobiography, Barnes wrote of his father: “... with so little education, he had worked so hard for us. His legacy to me was his effort, and that was plenty. He knew absolutely nothing about art.”
Weeks before Ernie Barnes’ first solo art exhibition in 1966, he was at the family home in Durham as his father lay in the hospital after suffering a stroke. He noticed the usually well-maintained white picketed fence had gone untended since his father’s illness. Days later, Ernest E. Barnes Sr. died. “I placed a painting against the fence and stood away and had a look. I was startled at the marriage between the old wood fence and the painting. It was perfect. In tribute, Daddy’s fence would hug all my paintings in a prestigious New York gallery. That would have made him smile.”
Eyes closed
A consistent and distinct feature in Barnes' work is the closed eyes of his subjects. "It was in 1971 when I conceived the idea of The Beauty of the Ghetto as an exhibition. And I showed it to some people who were Black to get a reaction. And from one (person) it was very negative. And when I began to express my points of view (to this) professional man, he resisted the notion. And as a result of his comments and his attitude I began to see, observe, how blind we are to one another's humanity. Blinded by a lot of things that have, perhaps, initiated feelings in that light. We don't see into the depths of our interconnection. The gifts, the strength and potential within other human beings. We stop at color quite often. So one of the things we have to be aware of is who we are in order to have the capacity to like others. But when you cannot visualize the offerings of another human being you're obviously not looking at the human being with open eyes." "We look upon each other and decide immediately: This person is black, so he must be... This person lives in poverty, so he must be..."
Jewish community influence
Moving to an all-Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles known as the Fairfax District in 1971 was a major turning point in Barnes' life and art.
"Fairfax enlivened me to everyday life themes," he said, "and forced me to look at my life – the way I had grown up, the customs within my community versus the customs in the Jewish community. Their customs were documented, ours were not. Because we were so clueless that our own culture had value and because of the phrase 'Black is Beautiful' had just come into fashion, Black people were just starting to appreciate themselves as a people. But when it was said, 'I'm Black and I'm Proud,' I said, 'proud of what?' And that question of 'proud of what' led to a series of paintings that became “The Beauty of the Ghetto.'"
"The Beauty of the Ghetto" exhibition
In response to the 1960s "Black is beautiful" cultural movement and James Brown's 1968 "Say it Loud: I'm Black and I'm Proud" song, Barnes created The Beauty of the Ghetto exhibition of 35 paintings that toured major American cities from 1972 to 1979 hosted by dignitaries, professional athletes and celebrities.
Of this exhibition, Barnes said, "I am providing a pictorial background for an understanding into the aesthetics of black America. It is not a plea to people to continue to live there (in the ghetto) but for those who feel trapped, it is...a challenge of how beautiful life can be."
When the exhibition was on view in 1974 at the Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, Rep. John Conyers stressed the important positive message of the exhibit in the Congressional Record.
Sports art
The Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee named Barnes "Sports Artist of the 1984 Olympic Games". LAOOC President Peter V. Ueberroth said Barnes and his art "captured the essence of the Olympics" and "portray the city's ethnic diversity, the power and emotion of sports competition, the singleness of purpose and hopes that go into the making of athletes the world over." Barnes was commissioned to create five Olympic-themed paintings and serve as an official Olympic spokesman to encourage inner city youth.
1985: Barnes was named the first "Sports Artist of the Year" by the United States Sports Academy.
1987: Barnes created Fastbreak, a commissioned painting of the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers basketball team that included Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Kurt Rambis and Michael Cooper.
1996: Carolina Panthers football team owners Rosalind and Jerry Richardson (Barnes' former Colts teammate) commissioned Barnes to create the large painting Victory in Overtime (approximately 7 ft. x 14 ft.). It was unveiled before the team's 1996 inaugural season and hangs permanently in the owner's suite at the stadium. Richardson and Barnes were Baltimore Colts teammates briefly in 1960.
1996: To commemorate their 50th anniversary in 1996, the National Basketball Association commissioned Barnes to create a painting with the theme, "Where we were, where we are, and where we are going." The painting, The Dream Unfolds hangs in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. A limited edition of lithographs were made, with the first 50 prints going to each of the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team.
2004: Barnes was named "America's Best Painter of Sports" by the American Sport Art Museum & Archives.
Other notable sports commissions include paintings for the New Orleans Saints, Oakland Raiders and Boston Patriots football team owners.
"The Bench" painting
Shortly after Barnes was drafted by the Baltimore Colts, Barnes was invited to see their Colts' NFL Championship Game vs. the New York Giants at Memorial Stadium in Maryland on December 27, 1959. The Colts won 31–16 and Barnes was filled with layers of emotion after watching the game from the Colts' bench. At age 21, he had just signed his football contract and met his new teammates Johnny Unitas, Jim Parker, Lenny Moore, Art Donovan, Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche and "Big Daddy" Lipscomb.
After he returned home, without making any preliminary sketches, he went directly to a blank canvas to record his point of view. Using a palette knife, "painting in quick, direct movements hoping to capture the vision...before it evaporated," Barnes said, he created "The Bench" in less than an hour. Throughout his life, The Bench remained in Barnes' possession, even taking it with him to all his football training camps and hiding it under his bed. It would be the only painting Barnes would never sell, despite many substantial offers, including a $25,000 bid at his first show in 1966.
In 2014, Barnes' wife Bernie presented The Bench painting to the Pro Football Hall of Fame for their permanent collection in Canton, Ohio.
"The Sugar Shack" painting
Barnes created the painting The Sugar Shack in 1971. It gained international exposure when it was used on the Good Times television series and on the 1976 Marvin Gaye album I Want You.
According to Barnes, he created the original version of The Sugar Shack after reflecting upon his childhood, during which he was not "able to go to a dance." In a 2008 interview, Barnes said, "The Sugar Shack is a recall of a childhood experience. It was the first time my innocence met with the sins of dance. The painting transmits rhythm so the experience is re-created in the person viewing it. To show that African-Americans utilize rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension."
The Sugar Shack has been known to art critics for embodying the style of art composition known as "Black Romantic," which, according to Natalie Hopkinson of The Washington Post, is the "visual-art equivalent of the Chitlin' circuit."
When Barnes first created The Sugar Shack, he included his hometown radio station WSRC on a banner. (He incorrectly listed the frequency as 620, though it was actually 1410. Barnes confused what he used to hear WSRC's on-air personality Norfley Whitted saying "620 on your dial" when Whitted was at his former station WDNC in the early 1950s.)
After Marvin Gaye asked him for permission to use the painting as an album cover, Barnes then augmented the painting by adding references that allude to Gaye's album, including banners hanging from the ceiling to promote the album's singles.
During the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever anniversary television special on March 25, 1983, tribute was paid to The Sugar Shack with a dance interpretation of the painting. It was also during this telecast that Michael Jackson introduced his famous "moonwalk" dance.
The original piece is currently owned by Jim and Jeannine Epstein, and is on display at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. A duplicate created by Barnes was created in 1976 on display at the California African American Museum (CAAM).
Music album covers
Barnes' work appears on the following album covers:
The Sugar Shack painting on Marvin Gaye's 1976 I Want You
The Disco painting on self-titled 1978 Faith, Hope & Charity
Donald Byrd and 125th Street, NYC painting on self-titled 1979 album
Late Night DJ painting on Curtis Mayfield's 1980 Something to Believe In
The Maestro painting on The Crusaders' 1984 Ghetto Blaster
Head Over Heels painting on The Crusaders' 1986 The Good and Bad Times
In Rapture painting on B.B. King's 2000 Making Love is Good For You
Other notable art and exhibitions
1992: In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Mayor Tom Bradley used Barnes' painting Growth Through Limits as an inspirational billboard in the inner-city. Barnes contributed $1,000 to the winner of a slogan contest among the city's junior high school students that best represented the painting.
1995: Barnes' work was included in the traveling group exhibition 20th Century Masterworks of African-American Artists II.
1998: Barnes' painting The Advocate was donated to the North Carolina Central University School of Law by a private collector. Barnes felt compelled to create the painting from his "concern with the just application of the law... the integrity of the legal process for all people, but especially those without resource or influence."
2001: While watching the tragic events of 9/11, Barnes created the painting In Remembrance. It was formally unveiled at the Seattle Art Museum. It was later acquired on behalf of the City of Philadelphia and donated to its African American Museum. A limited number of giclée prints were sold with 100% of the proceeds going to the Hero Scholarship Fund, which provides college tuition and expenses to children of Pennsylvania police and fire personnel killed in the line of duty.
2005: Three of Barnes' original paintings were exhibited at London's Whitechapel Gallery in the 2005 Back to Black: Art, Cinema & Racial Imaginary art exhibition.
2005: Kanye West commissioned Barnes to create a painting to depict his life-changing experience following his near-fatal car crash. A Life Restored measures 9 ft. x 10 ft. In the center of the painting is a large angel reaching out to a much smaller figure of West.
October 2007: Barnes' final public exhibition. The National Football League and Time Warner sponsored A Tribute to Artist and NFL Alumni Ernie Barnes in New York City.
At the time of his passing, Barnes had been working on an exhibition Liberating Humanity From Within which featured a majority of paintings he created in the last few years of his life. Plans are under way for the exhibition to travel throughout the country and abroad.
Television and movies
Barnes appeared on a 1967 episode of the game show To Tell the Truth. The panelists correctly guessed Barnes was the professional football player-turned-artist.
Barnes played Deke Coleman in the 1969 motion picture Number One, which stars Charlton Heston and Jessica Walter. Barnes played Dr. Penfield in the 1971 movie Doctors' Wives, which starred Dyan Cannon, Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman and Carroll O'Connor.
In 1971 Barnes, along with Mike Henry, created the Super Comedy Bowl, a variety show CBS television special which showcased pro athletes with celebrities such as John Wayne, Frank Gifford, Alex Karras, Joe Namath, Jack Lemmon, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Tony Curtis. A second special aired in 1972.
Throughout the Good Times television series (1974–79) most of the paintings by the character J.J. are works by Ernie Barnes. However a few images, including "Black Jesus" in the first season (1974), were not painted by Barnes. The Sugar Shack made its debut on the show's fourth season (1976–77) during the opening and closing credits. In the fifth season (1977–78) The Sugar Shack was only used in the closing credits for five early episodes during that season. In the sixth season (1978–79), The Sugar Shack was only used in opening credits for the first eight episodes and in the closing credits for five early episodes during that season. In the fifth and sixth seasons (1977–79), The Sugar Shack appears in the background of the Evans family apartment. Barnes had a bit part on two episodes of Good Times: The Houseguest (February 18, 1975) and Sweet Daddy Williams (January 20, 1976).
Barnes' artwork was also used on many television series, including Columbo, The White Shadow, Dream On, The Hughleys, The Wayans Bros., Wife Swap, and Soul Food, and in the movies Drumline and Boyz n the Hood.
In 1981 Barnes played baseball catcher Josh Gibson of the Negro League in the television movie Don't Look Back: The Story of Leroy ‘Satchel' Paige with Lou Gossett Jr. playing Paige.
The 2016 film Southside with You (about Barack and Michelle Obama's first date) prominently features Barnes' work in an early scene where the two characters visit an art exhibition.
Death
Barnes passed away on Monday evening, April 27, 2009 at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California from myeloid leukemia. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in two places: at his hometown Durham, North Carolina, near the site of where his family home once stood, and at the beach in Carmel, California, one of his favorite cities.
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