1x1 With Kristian Harloff

Looking for someone with peak screen presence? It's Janelle Monáe. Whether it’s in a film or show, via her music, or perhaps even giving an acceptance speech when being recognized for her work, she’s utterly captivating courtesy of her inspiring energy and the palpable intention behind everything she does. You can see it in her work in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and you can feel the gratitude in her speeches and interviews while celebrating the film’s awards season run.Given Glass Onion has been streaming on Netflix for nearly a month, this will be your one and only warning; this interview contains Glass Onion spoilers! If you’ve yet to see the film, go watch it on Netflix and this interview will be waiting for you when you’re ready.With that taken care of, Monáe tackles not one, not two, but three roles in Glass Onion. She plays Andi, she plays Andi’s sister Helen, and she also plays Helen pretending to be Andi. It’s not an easy range to navigate, but Monáe pulls it off beautifully, managing to

Andrea Riseborough is one of the most exciting creators out there right now. If you can’t get behind that statement, odds are, you haven’t seen enough of her one-of-a-kind filmography. From Birdman to Battle of the Sexes, Black Mirror, Mandy, Possessor, and then some, Riseborough is consistently taking on bold projects, completely vanishing into her roles, and showing a willingness to take her work to the nth degree to bring the trustiest version of her characters' experiences to the screen. All of that is on display yet again in one of her latest releases, To Leslie.Inspired by screenwriter Ryan Binaco’s own mother, To Leslie stars Riseborough as the title character, a woman living in West Texas who hits big playing the lottery. While the initial hope is to put that money towards making a better life for her son, Leslie succumbs to her struggle with alcoholism and winds up homeless. Having hurt the people she’s closest to repeatedly, Leslie’s left with no one to turn to until she meets Marc Maron’s character

I’ve been actively seeking out Lucy Boynton’s work ever since catching The Blackcoat’s Daughter at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2015. She’s been delivering big ever since, making surprising choices and showing off great range at every turn so, of course, I’ve been eager to have her as a guest on Collider Ladies Night, and now the time has come.The icing on the cake? She’s an ideal interviewee for a show like Ladies Night. Throughout our chat, it was abundantly clear that Boynton’s an artist who’s very in touch with her craft and deeply values the influences who have helped shape the actor she’s become — or rather, the influences that have shown her she has the authority to shape her craft and her career path how she wants.In celebration of her latest feature film, The Pale Blue Eye, arriving on Netflix, Boynton joined me for a Ladies Night conversation to revisit her journey from playing a boulder in a school play (yes, a boulder) to building a filmography that’s packed to the brim with ins

Claire Foy is a hugely talented pro. She’s been delivering big on screen and on stage for years, she won two Emmys for her work in The Crown, she earned four BAFTA nominations, two for The Crown, one for First Man and another for Wolf Hall, and now she’s rightfully in the awards season conversation yet again for her performance in Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. However, even with all those achievements, she hesitates to give herself credit for giving her young Women Talking co-stars good advice. (Even though it's spot on stuff.)The film is based on Miriam Toews’ best-selling novel about a group of women living in a secluded religious colony who must figure out how to respond to a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men. Do they stay and act as though nothing happened? Do they stay and fight back? Or, do they leave everything they’ve ever known behind to build a better life elsewhere?With the film now playing in select theaters and set to expand nationwide on January 27th, Foy took the time

Imagine growing up a huge Disney Channel fan and then scoring a starring role on a highly anticipated Disney+ series. That’s exactly what happened for Zuri Reed with National Treasure: Edge of History.In the sequel series to the National Treasure films starring Nicolas Cage, we meet a new lead character, Jess Valenzuela played by Lisette Olivera. Jess loves a good mystery and has a knack for solving puzzles, so when she finds herself in the midst of a treasure hunt that could have ties to her late father, she absolutely has to see it through. But, she can’t do it alone and that’s where Reed’s character, Tasha, comes in. Tasha is Jess’ best friend and roommate, and also happens to be a tech whiz, making her an invaluable member of the team going on this wild adventure.With National Treasure: The Edge of History three episodes into its 10-episode run, with Episode 4 scheduled to hit Disney+ on December 28th, Reed took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party conversation to expla

Madelaine Petsch is nearing the end of a seven-season run with Riverdale. While it’s likely scary to leave a long-running and very popular show behind, it will afford Petsch the opportunity to tackle other genres, flex new acting muscles, and maybe even get involved behind the scenes in different capacities. If her latest release, the Amazon Freevee film, Hotel for the Holidays, is any indication, Petsch is gearing up to do all of that and then some.Petsch leads Hotel for the Holidays as Georgia, the manager of the Hotel Fontaine in New York City. It’s Christmastime, so there’s sky-high pressure to offer guests a high-end hotel experience loaded with holiday spirit. Georgia always strives to bring her A game to work, but it’s not easy juggling a curious spark with the hotel chef (Mena Massoud), an infamous pop star, a European ex-prince, her own personal career ambitions, and more.With Hotel for the Holidays now available to stream via Amazon Freevee, Petsch took the time to join me for a Collider L

Have you watched the first two episodes of Willow on Disney+ yet? If you haven’t, you should because the series is a delightful fantasy adventure featuring a stellar main ensemble brimming with chemistry. If you’ve already seen “The Gales” and “The High Aldwin,” however, I’m willing to bet you’re eager to learn more about Willow’s Ruby Cruz who plays Queen Sorsha’s (Joanne Whalley) daughter, Kit.The show picks up many years after the events of the 1988 film, far enough in the future that baby Elora Danan is now grown. Even though Warwick Davis’ Willow and Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan were able to save baby Elora from the forces of darkness back then, Willow still has a vision that ancient evil will rise and destroy the future empress, so they decide it’s best to hide Elora’s true identity — even from herself.Meanwhile, Kit comes face-to-face with an emerging evil when Tir Asleen is attacked and her brother, Airk (Dempsey Bryk), is taken. Desperate to find him, she opts to step up and venture beyond

As we often talk about on Collider Ladies Night, every path in this business is different, and those paths often evolve along the way. That’s exactly what happened to The White Lotus’ Haley Lu Richardson.Richardson plays Portia on Season 2 of the hit HBO show. This time around, creator, writer and director Mike White takes the luxury, overindulgence, and often awful behavior to a White Lotus resort in Taormina, Sicily. The only main character from Season 1 to bounce from one getaway to the next is Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid, and this time around, she's bringing her assistant, Richardson’s Portia, along for the ride.With The White Lotus well into its Season 2 run, Richardson joined us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night to revisit her early Disney and Nickelodeon ambitions and to discuss how she went on to build a filmography packed with bold genre movies, touching romantic dramas, independent gems, and spicy satire with The White Lotus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati

The Collider Ladies Night sub-series, Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party, was made for creators like Nikyatu Jusu. It’s designed to put the spotlight on promising filmmakers in the early stages of their careers who deliver so big with a new project that their star is bound to soar. Mark my words; that will happen for Jusu and this industry is better off for it.After winning the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival with Flower, earning a Short Film Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival for Suicide by Sunlight (which I highly recommend watching right here), and finding other success in the short film format, Jusu finally got the go-ahead for her feature directorial debut, Nanny. Anna Diop leads as Aisha, a Senegalese woman living in New York City who starts a new job caring for the daughter of Michelle Monaghan’s type-A working mom. The hope? That gig will give her the resources she needs to bring her own son, Lamine, to the US. However, the more Aisha works, the more

As a big believer that Taylor Russell is one of the best actors of her generation, it was the ultimate treat to have her on an episode of Collider Ladies Night. Her star soared courtesy of the Escape Room franchise, she was named Breakthrough Actor of 2019 at the Gotham Awards for her work in Waves, and now she delivers one of the very best performances of 2022 in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All opposite Timothée Chalamet.Russell plays Maren in the film, a young woman who was born an “eater,” someone who needs to consume human flesh. Due to this hereditary condition, Maren’s forced to live an isolated life on the outskirts of society. But, the same is true for Chalamet’s Lee and once they find each other, there’s a glimmer of hope that they indeed deserve love and have a place in this world.With Bones and All now playing in theaters nationwide, Russell joined us for a Collider Ladies Night chat to revisit her journey from The Mummy fan to becoming one of the most promising talents in this business. Hosted on

It may have taken Hong Chau longer than she would have liked for consistent opportunities to come her way, but it’s happening now and she’s proving that this industry should have taken notice far sooner.In her latest release, Mark Mylod’s The Menu, she’s a one-of-a-kind force as Elsa, the restaurant captain at Chef Slowik’s (Ralph Fiennes) secluded and very exclusive dining experience at Hawthorne. His new round of guests is an extra special one, destined for a meal they’ll never forget. While Elsa has a firm handle on the entire operation, she encounters an unexpected hiccup — Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot, the only guest who’s suspicious of the unusual chain of events and tension coursing through them. Allowing Margot to disrupt the plan for the evening is not an option for Elsa.With The Menu now playing in theaters and Chau’s next movie, The Whale, due out on December 9th, she joined us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party to explain how she reached a point where she regularly scores stellar projec

The John Ajvide Lindqvist novel, Let the Right One In, already has one downright phenomenal big screen adaptation and a rock solid American remake. Is it really possible for the source material to go three for three on screen? Five episodes into Showtime’s Let the Right One In series, it looks that way.The show has a number of key characters to track. Most closely associated with the original story is Ian Foreman’s Isaiah and Madison Taylor Baez’s Eleanor. Isaiah’s a young kid who struggles to make friends and often finds himself face-to-face with bullies. However, hope comes in the form of a new neighbor, Eleanor, a girl who appears to be about the same age. But, little does Isaiah know, Eleanor is actually a vampire and her father (Demián Bichir) spends much of his time figuring out how to feed her.Meanwhile, we’ve got Grace Gummer’s character Claire, a brilliant scientist building a promising career who’s forced to choose between that current work and her family when

Heather Langenkamp is a horror icon courtesy of her work as Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street. When you strike gold with an opportunity like that, it’s hard to imagine ever finding another role that’s on that same level. Langenkamp even said as much; “I knew nothing could be as good as Nancy. I've always felt that as a teenager and as a woman who grew up looking for good roles, it was really hard to find roles as good as that one.” But, then The Midnight Club came her way. She continued, “Except for now. I really feel like I found a role that's just as good as Nancy.”Langenkamp plays Dr. Georgina Stanton in The Midnight Club on Netflix. She runs Brightcliffe, a hospice for terminally ill young adults. Dr. Stanton insists on giving her residents the trust, care, and support they need to “focus on living instead of fighting.” She understands some come to Brightcliffe leaning into unorthodox remedies and doesn’t judge them for it, but it’s the one that her newest resident, Iman Benson’s Ilonka, falls into that

David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy may be coming to a close for Andi Matichak with Halloween Ends on October 14th, but between her work ethic, passion, and lessons learned from the legendary Jamie Lee Curtis, Matichak is bound to make the most of even more big screen opportunities moving forward.A first lead role in a Hollywood feature doesn’t get much bigger than this — playing Laurie Strode’s (Curtis) granddaughter in a Halloween film. Four years later, Matichak has starred opposite Curtis in three Halloween installments, with Halloween Ends marking an especially big shift for her character. In the 2018 film, an innocent and unknowing Allyson came face to face with her grandmother’s boogeyman, Michael Myers. Then in Halloween Kills, she was inspired to step up and join the fight to take him down, losing her mother, Karen (Judy Greer), in the process.Halloween Ends begins four years after that blood-soaked encounter. Allyson’s built a life with her grandmother and works as a nurse in

Ghosts marks Danielle Pinnock’s very first series regular role. If you’ve seen even a single episode of the downright delightful CBS show, you’re well aware she’s making the most of the opportunity and that there’s just no better actor for the role of Alberta.Ghosts is an absolute must-see, one of the best new comedy series in recent years, but just in case you’re a little late to the game, we've got a primer for you; the CBS show is an adaption of the British series of the same name. In this version, Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar play Sam and Jay, a couple that inherits Woodstone Mansion and hope to turn the property into a B&B.While getting settled, Sam suffers a bad fall and when she comes to, she realizes she can now see Ghosts and that her new home has a whole bunch of them, including Pinnock’s Alberta, a Prohibition-era jazz singer who’s convinced she was murdered.With Ghosts Season 2 now underway, Pinnock took the time to join us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party to discuss her j

Mia Goth has been quietly amassing one of the most exciting filmographies out there for the last 10 years. Until now, that is. She’s delivered standout supporting performances in films like The Survivalist, A Cure for Wellness, Suspiria, and more, but Ti West is the first to fully embrace the powerhouse she is and send her star soaring in a big way by releasing not one but two features in a single calendar year with Goth as the headliner, X back in March and now the prequel film, Pearl.Even after having worked with some of the most iconic directors in the industry like Lars von Trier, Gore Verbinski, and Luca Guadagnino, it wasn’t until X that Goth finally got her first lead role in a feature film. One film quickly, or rather immediately, became two when inspiration struck and West got the OK from A24 to film not one, but two movies within the same series. First up would be X in which Goth starred as Maxine, a young woman with big dreams, and also as Pearl, an older woman struggling to cope with the fact that

If you’re looking for a good example of someone who put in the work and experienced a steady climb to #1 on the call sheet, look no further than Abigail Cowen. While she has worked on a number of projects outside of Netflix, if you look at her work for the streamer alone she went from having a few lines in Stranger Things to scoring a supporting role in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina where Kiernan Shipka showed her what it means to headline a series, and now Cowen is doing just that starring as Bloom in Fate: The Winx Saga. Just in case you need a little Winx 101, the Netflix series was inspired by the Nickelodeon animated series, Winx Club. In the live-action version, Cowen’s Bloom is a teenager from Earth (aka the First World) who discovers that she’s actually a fire fairy. She’s sent to the Otherworld where she’s enrolled at Alfea, a boarding school dedicated to teaching fairies how to master their powers.Bloom’s thrown into the deep end, to say the least, in Season 1, needing to ab

There’s a slew of reasons why Cobra Kai is a very special series, but after being lucky enough to chat with the cast and creators for five seasons, one particular thing stands out — the Cobra Kai company is packed with people who understand these characters and are deeply dedicated to doing whatever they can to make their journeys stronger and stronger along the way.Mary Mouser made her first appearance on Collider Ladies Night back in August 2020. That was just after news broke that the series would be moving over to Netflix and just before Season 3 debuted on the streamer. A lot has happened since, both for Mouser herself and for Samantha LaRusso, and that’s exactly what we’re digging into during Mouser’s return to Collider Ladies Night — in person!During a round of Dicey Questions, Mouser highlighted, “Our writers are incredible at adapting and writing to these characters that we’ve probably all co-created at this point.” She continued, “I get to have a say, which is a really cool thing as a young actor to

Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, is a one-of-a-kind production, but fortunately, Nazanin Boniadi had a slew of past experiences that put her in prime position to make the absolute most of this whirlwind ride.The show takes place during the Second Age. While it may seem like a period of peace and calm, Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel senses evil brewing and Boniadi’s Bronwyn comes face to face with that evil in Episode 1. Bronwyn is a Southlander. Many years back, their ancestors chose evil over good and their people have been paying for it ever since. They were forced to start from scratch by being banished to baron lands where they’re watched over by the elves. Bronwyn, however, is determined to change that. She aims to liberate her people so they can finally move on from their past.With the first two episodes of The Rings of Power now available to stream on Prime Video, Boniadi joined us for an episode of Collider Ladies Night to recap her journey in the industry and pinpoint key moment

Markella Kavenagh already had a handful of experience and credits to her name before jumping into The Rings of Power, but Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings series is about to send her star soaring in a very big way.The show takes place before the events of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings film trilogies, during the Second Age. While there is some that view it as a time of peace initially, Galadriel, played here by Morfydd Clark, senses evil brewing. While she sets off to face it head-on, Kavenagh’s Nori is living the nomadic lifestyle of a Harfoot. Even though Nori is very dedicated to her family, friends, and the community overall, she feels pulled towards bigger things, and that pull becomes especially strong when she encounters a mysterious stranger played by David Weyman.With the first two episodes of The Rings of Power now available on Prime Video, it’s time to get to know Kavenagh a bit better. During our Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party interview we retraced her steps from first recognizin