Transcript: 'My Year is Gone Career-Wise'
Transcript: 'My Year is Gone Career-Wise'
A striking actress on the heartbreak and anguish of the shutdown
Sean McNulty (00:00):
For your awards consideration, presenting the HBO original Succession. In this series, a power struggle ensues as the family weighs up a future where their cultural and political weight is severely curtailed. IndieWire called the series, the end-all be-all of TV. Emmy eligible for Outstanding Drama Series and all other categories.
(00:28)
Welcome to The Ankler podcast. This is Sean McNulty from The Wakeup Newsletter recording here on Thursday, August 24th. I'm from the Jersey Shore where I'll keep the fist pumping to a minimum. Joined today by, of course, Elaine Low and Richard Rushfield in Los Angeles, and Peter Kiefer joining as well today. Elaine, Richard, and I have been breathlessly awaiting your reaction to the And Just Like That… finale. Have you watched it yet, or where's the status on this?
Elaine Low (00:55):
No spoilers. It's only been out for like 12 hours. I am really looking forward to it, though.
Sean McNulty (01:01):
Are you? It got renewed for Season 3. You have more to watch in a year and a half or something.
Elaine Low (01:07):
Yeah, whenever the strike's over and they manage to get back into production.
Sean McNulty (01:11):
In the writer's room. This is the big... Are you excited for your Kim Cattrall cameo, the 87 pieces in the trades that have been hyping this for five months now? Are you ready for your one line of dialogue or whatever this is going to be?
Elaine Low (01:23):
I am very curious about how they're going to handle it. You joke, Sean, but I'm invested.
Sean McNulty (01:27):
They got you hooked. Right after this podcast, you are going to stream And Just Like That... You can follow Elaine on Twitter to get her hot takes on that one. Richard, did you finish reading the big Zas profile in the New Yorker this week?
Richard Rushfield (01:41):
I'm savoring it a sentence at a time.
Sean McNulty (01:43):
Oh!
Richard Rushfield (01:46):
We can't know too much about David Zaslav and his fascinating life.
Sean McNulty (01:50):
A lot to cover there. It's a stroll, Richard, for maybe you and I down memory lane of the media world of the '90s and early 2000s a little bit. Some names in there I hadn't heard in a long time, so it was actually pretty interesting.
Richard Rushfield (02:02):
I'm looking forward to it. My whole family is going to gather around the fireplace this weekend.
Sean McNulty (02:07):
Get the kids.
Richard Rushfield (02:08):
I'll read it to them, and we'll all talk about our favorite parts and write letters to Uncle Zaslav and tell him how we're [inaudible 00:02:19].
Sean McNulty (02:19):
Papa Rushfield Story Hour, here we go. Peter, you and Elaine have a piece hot off the presses here at The Ankler. Outside of the usual neuroses, how's the mental health going in Hollywood these days?
Peter Kiefer (02:34):
Elaine and I, over the past, I don't know, three weeks, we've been interviewing just about everyone we can. We set out to try and use the impending end of summer and the arrival of fall as our news hook in this whole thing, and to look back at this summer and try and get a sense of where people are thinking and feeling about this strike. We tried to tackle everyone, below the line, vendors, lawyers, publicists, agents. Elaine's been out, as we all know, on the picket lines, talking to all sorts of creatives.
(03:07)
In sum, people aren't feeling very good right now, especially this week, I'd say. I think, as we say in the story, it felt like at the end of last week and at the top of this week, things were trending in the right direction. Then obviously, the events of Tuesday night occurred, and it feels like, as Elaine wrote yesterday in Strikegeist, that set things back dramatically.