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Front Page Review and Interview Archive
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Actress Sara Deray
Actors
have to imagine a lot of things. We have to build life from words on
paper. We also have to build a lot of things that aren’t written. You
have to imagine them and create them. You have to try and find the truth
and connect with the character. In all the parts that I play I try to
find the parts within me that connect with the character.”
Those are the words of actress Sara Deray of Spain and she has had to
imagine a lot of things during her career, as she has played a nun (El
Sorbono del Cielo), an inmate in jail, a scientist who was the
mother to a cloned daughter (Órbita 9), she incredibly funny
as Mary Ann, in the television
series Yo Soy Franky (I Am Franky) for Nickelodeon (2016 –
Colombia), and she just finished her fourth season of the comedy series
El Pueblo, a Spanish Amazon Prime production, in which she plays
Maria Luisa.
Sara Deray’s ability to portray a broad spectrum of characters is due to
a combination of her skills as an actress and her culturally diverse
background.
She
explains, “My grandma was born in France. That was my mother’s mother.
She went to the United States when she was quite young and she decided
to become a U.S. citizen. She left her French nationality behind and
married an American guy. That was after she had my mom and she became
divorced from my grandfather. She then married the American guy. My
grandma married three times. The first time
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Akash Sherman - Film Interview
Some
people when you encounter them you just get this sense they are standing
on the precipice of greatness. It has not quite arrived yet, but all the
signs are there, your artform, whatever it may be and in this case with
Canadian screenwriter and director Akash Sherman it is his
internationally and critically acclaimed film. You have significant peers,
who only seems like yesterday were not your peers, seeking you out for
collaborations and you have two television and film stars who heap
praise upon you after working with you.
As much as the entertainment industry is filled with stories of
successful performing artists who grew up in places like Los Angeles,
New York City and Nashville, there are an equal number of fabulous
stories of artists who grew up in obscure places, not obscure, because
they were unimportant, but more because one does not think of those
towns, cities and villages, as an incubator for creatives. Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada is one of those cities and this writer says that with
warmth and sincerity, as it is still the city considered to be my
hometown, even though I was born in Toronto.
Akash Sherman, whose father and sister are both doctors and whose mother
is a pharmacist, one might have assumed would have been headed for more
of an academic career, in a cold, northern city, far removed from
Canada’s two Hollywood North cities, Vancouver and Toronto and where
minus thirty and minus forty degrees Celsius temperatures keep
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Sierra Rein - Actress / Singer
These
are heady days for actress and singer Sierra Rein, she has now returned
to what she enjoys doing most in life, performing on stage and in front
of a camera, after two years of much of the arts world being put on an
involuntary pause due to COVID. She has two podcasts on the go, a short
film in post-production, appears in two episodes of a series to be
broadcast and streamed on FX on Hulu this fall and she has several
exciting music gigs coming up. Believe or not that is just barely
scratching the surface.
Sierra Rein (pronounced Rhine as in rhinestones) talks about her role in
the Hulu series Fleishman is in Trouble, “It came out of the blue. It
was January of this year and my agent who hadn’t really talked to me for
a while said hey can you put yourself on tape for this TV show? I didn’t
really know much about the project, so I did a tiny bit of Googling. I
was like oh, okay there is this character Cherry who is in the book
Fleishman is in Trouble, but there wasn’t very much about her. I had my
husband do the other dialogue and I shot the scene and sent it in. This
was when we were in lockdown a little bit (New York City). We were
slowing emerging and putting our toes back into the river of humanity of
this year.
In mid-February I got an email that said, you are booked. I called my
husband and I said you know that one minute scene that you shot with me,
I am going to do a scene with Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg. It was
one of those surreal moments.
I was surprised they didn’t have a callback. I think it was one
of those (times) when they see who the person is and think yep that’s
the character. That’s great, because
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Executive Producer Jeanette B. Milio
Recently,
Riveting Riffs Magazine sat down with Jeanette B. Milio who depending on
the project she is working on sometimes wears the hat of producer and
sometimes she dons the executive producer’s hat. During the course of
her career Ms. Milio has garnered significant respect from her peers,
networks, film studios and distributors for her keen business acumen and
her knowledge of how to finance and produce a feature film or television
and streaming series that will put people in the seats in cinemas or
have their eyes glued to their television sets at home. We asked
Jeanette B. Milio if she would be gracious enough to take us behind the
scenes and explain the business side to us. Jeanette B.
Milio’s story begins in a small town outside of Cologne, Germany, where
she was raised by a single mother, who was a hairdresser. At first
glance this would appear to be an inauspicious start and far removed
from the life she built as a movie mogul, but she credits in part, her
success to lessons learned from her mother (more about that in a
minute). “I didn’t have any
idea of what this industry would be like.
The one thing I remember that drew me to storytelling even as a child,
is that I would come up with little stories and I would engage all the
children on our street to perform the stories in Saturday morning
theater pieces on the stairs in front of our house. I invited all of the
other neighborhood kids to come and watch the plays and to pay ten
pennies. I think I was |
Kincső
Nóra
Pethő
Fresh
from performing as a futuristic computer from the year 2100 who is named
after the Greek goddess of earth Gaia IA 01, and who sends a message
back to today to warn others about a pending environmental apocalypse
unless we change our ways, Hungarian actress, choreographer and dancer
Kincső
Nóra
Pethő
sat down for a conversation with Riveting Riffs Magazine, over Skype.
Obviously, only the Gaia part is taken from the Greek goddess, as
Kincső
Nóra
Pethő
explains, “I
am like a computer program from the future who becomes a real person by
the end of this 70-minute show. It was called Heroes of the Future
and it was part of Planet Budapest 2021. There were about fifty
actors and actresses working on this project, which was intended to
raise the interest of kids for protecting the environment. For one week
(in early December) the program ran from morning until evening. It was a
wonderful experience to see how enthusiastic the kids were! I felt great
about contributing to such a good goal!”
Continuing
she says, “We
talk to the children about how in the year 2100 there is not enough air,
and the environment has been destroyed. (The message is) they have to be
conscious of what they are doing in the present in 2021.
When we had some rehearsal groups and I could see a small guy, who was
ten years
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Actor Miquel Garcia Borda
Recently,
Miquel Garcia Borda, an actor, director, producer, and writer who splits
his time between Barcelona and Madrid was our guest at Riveting Riffs
Magazine. You have seen him TV 3 the Catalan television station in
series such as If I Hadn’t Met You and in the Vancouver Media /
Atres Media production of the popular television, now Netflix series
Money Heist, which first aired on Antena 3 in Spain. You can also
catch him in the current production Hache, also on Netflix. He is
directing, producing, and starring in the feature film Pregunta Por
Mí Mañana opposite actress Paula Moncada. Earlier in his career he
also directed music videos for two better known Spanish bands, Sol
Lagarto and Pastora, as well as two other films.
We quickly learned
about Miquel Garcia Borda even prior to the interview that is he is a
very gracious man, who does not take his opportunities and
accomplishments for granted, who seems to understand that who he is as
an artist is the sum of his life experiences and the people from whom he
has learned along the way. “When I was in college and I was nineteen we
were doing a play The Philanderer by George Bernard Shaw and I
was playing the main character. The instructor, Juame Melendres said to
me are you allowed to go out at night? You are too young to do that. (He
laughs) I said I get it. I will try harder. You must have lived. You
have to live a lot to use it for your characters,” says
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Actor German Torres
Actor
and singer German Torres who in recent years starred in some impressive
musicals in Spain, Beauty and the Beast and 24 horas en la
vida una mujer (24 Hours in the Life of a Woman) and in 2013 he
received the award for Best Supporting Actor from the La Unión de
Actores (the equivalent of the American Screen Actors Guild), for his
role in Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov, was our guest recently at
Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about his career in theater, film and
television, both as an actor and a producer. At the time we
spoke, 24 horas en la vida de una mujer, produced by highly acclaimed
actress Silvia Marsó, who also starred in the musical with Felipe Ansola
had just returned to the stage at Teatro Galileo in Madrid, after an
absence of nine months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked German
Torres what that experience was like. He said, “It was
fantastic, after the world stopped, returning to the stage is a miracle.
The theater has maximum security and culture is safe now in Madrid. We
are allowed to have fifty-five percent (of capacity) for the audience
now. In other communities only thirty people are allowed. We had forgotten,
just a little about the energy of the stage, because it had been so long
There were also
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Derek Siow - Actor Interview
Derek Siow is one
of those people you could sit and talk to for hours on end, both because
he is so affable and he is an immensely talented actor, screenwriter and
voice actor, who has worked in film, theater and the burgeoning video
game market. The Australian thespian who now makes his home in London,
England, he is part of the cast for the audio book The Sandman: Act
II, which featured a stunning cast that included, James McAvoy, Emma
Corrin, Brian Cox, Kat Dennings, John Lithgow and Bill Nighy. He also
has two films in postproduction that he is not yet at liberty to talk
about. Before we get into
Derek Siow’s acting let’s spend a moment or two talking about his other
passion, screenwriting. “I write sci-fi,
drama and comedy and I write mainly because I just crave that creative
outlet. In my younger days I wrote a lot of songs (oh right we forgot to
mention his music, but we will!) but my writing is more focused on
screenplays now. I was really fortunate last year when one of my comedy
scripts placed as a semi-finalist one of the screenwriting competitions
so I’m always looking at the various options on where to take my
projects,” he says.
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Norwegian Actress / Director
In
September Norwegian director, screenwriter and actress Camilla Roman’s
short film Waves premiered at the tenth Global Nonviolent Film
Festival in Hollywood, California. Riveting Riffs Magazine had the
opportunity to watch Waves. Like other films that Camilla Roman
has written and directed Waves packs a powerful message that is
very relevant to this moment in time.
Without giving away too much of the storyline, asylum seeker Leyla
played by Tonje Thwin and Stig portrayed by Eric Vorenholt meet during a
COVID-19 lockdown, while Stig is making a delivery to her home. All is
not what it seems however and as the story unfolds the characters have
to make a decision to trust one another and to tell their own stories.
Norwegian readers will recognize Tonje Thwin from television series such
as Sol, Snart Seks (2016) when she was cast in the role of
Linnea’s mother and her regular role as Fiona in Hotel Caesar
between 2014 – 17. Eric Vorenholt is best known for his role as Arne
Hammer in The King’s Choice (2016), which was in consideration
for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. He also appeared in six
episodes of the 2020 television series Vikingane.
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