Uncategorized
By Désirée I. Guzzetta
Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty had both been working steadily prior to landing their roles as Hughie Campbell and Annie January/Starlight, respectively, on Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys.” Most recently, Quaid voiced several characters, including Richie Rich, on the animated show, “Harvey Girls Forever!” and is now also voicing Ensign Boimler on the new animated series, “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
Among Moriarty’s stand-out roles were Audrey Hart, daughter of Woody Harrelson’s Marty, on season one of “True Detective” (2014), and Hope Shlottman on a season of “Jessica Jones” (2015). Before starring opposite each other on “The Boys,” in fact, she and Quaid also appeared together in a video short in 2018, “Creedence Clearwater Revival: Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”
The two were paired together to discuss their roles on “The Boys” in a recent Zoom roundtable interview. When we last them in character, Annie and Hughie were estranged. Though Hughie had real feelings for Annie, especially after their “meet cute” on the park bench in the first episode when he didn’t know she was Starlight, he’d betrayed her trust too much for her to forgive him. Moriarty and Quaid, however, have an easy camaraderie.
The Nerd Element asked them if Annie and Hughie could ever regain their trust in one another during the upcoming second season.
Quaid, who said Hughie “one-thousand percent trusts Annie [because] he was the one that messed up,” deferred to Moriarty for her answer.
“That’s kind of the big question, honestly, between them,” Moriarty said. “The reality is that’s the question that needs to be answered as the episodes roll out. There’s no way of answering it without giving away spoilers, but I will say that a lot of Annie’s trajectory this season is trying to—she’s compensating for what happened to her last season.”
Moriarty said that Annie “feels kind of stupid for the extent of how much she trusted people, which I’m not saying is necessarily correct. But I think we often go through that when we’ve been heartbroken by the people we love the most when we find out they’ve lied to us.”
“So now she’s got this thick wall up,” Moriarty continued, “and I think she is overcompensating for the violation of trust against her. I think as the season progresses, she’s able to slowly thin that wall.” Moriarty said that Hughie will still be a good guy, which Annie is “less able to deny that as the season goes on.” But she didn’t want to be definitive to avoid spoiling the two’s upcoming journey.
While Hughie is a good person, he’s also someone the audience has already seen slowly unraveling, first with the death of his girlfriend, Robin (Jess Salgueiro), when A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) literally runs through her, and then when he slowly has to compromise some of his morality thanks to the situations Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the leader of the Boys, puts him in.
Quaid was asked about Hughie’s mental state, given all that’s happened to him and what was shown in the trailer for the new season (i.e., stuck in a boat that plows through a whale).
“Will he survive with his sanity intact?” Quaid responded, laughing. “That’s the ever-lingering question. I think [showrunner] Eric Kripke is basically just trolling me at this point. He will do anything to traumatize this poor kid.”
Quaid pointed out that Hughie starts the new season “in a low place. He has less than he did at the beginning of season one—all of his friends are thinking about leaving him and abandoning the cause.” Even the return of Butcher, who’s been his mentor, doesn’t make Hughie feel all that much better.
Hughie “sees through the veil that” Butcher projects, Quaid said, and knows that he cannot trust the man. He noted that Hughie has a long road ahead of him to recover from everything he’s already been through.
“You know, I often think that season one Hughie is about anxiety, and season two Hughie is about depression,” Quaid said.
Moriarty was asked if Starlight will continue her attempts to take down Vought International, the company that created The Seven, the team of superheroes she joined, and if Starlight would be willing to do so openly. Moriarty pointed out that Starlight already called out what The Deep (Chace Crawford) did to her, and it wound up burnishing her image.
However, Starlight has a new “supe” to contend with, Aya Cash’s Stormfront. “We see that [Stormfront’s] got this rebellious nature about herself that’s kind of anti-Vought, but they still hire her and they like it because it’s this fresh new energy,” Moriarty said, adding “so I will say that publicly coming out—making a speech or a public display of going against Vought—I don’t think is going to be Starlight’s method of trying to take them down. I think it’s going to need to be more covert.”
Moriarty was also asked what Starlight’s relationship with Stormfront would be like, especially given Stormfront’s devil-may-care attitude versus Starlight’s more conservative nature.
“I think the apparently cool thing about Stormfront is we meet her and she’s the first person who, upon meeting Homelander (Antony Starr), [is] not impressed at all. Being introduced to anything that’s Vought-related, she ain’t impressed,” she said.
Moriarty revealed that Stormfront calls Starlight “a Vought Barbie. You get the impression that she thinks [all of The Seven are] Vought puppets, so Starlight actually respects that.”
Starlight, however, knows she has to keep her own actions against Vought secret, and she’s not about to drop her guard, even if she finds Stormfront’s attitude refreshing.
“I would say the beginning dynamic is one in which Starlight is trying to pursue an allyship and Stormfront doesn’t reciprocate that, but both of them have a facade and both of those facades are kind of ripped away to each other as the season progresses.” Moriarty could not reveal more without giving out spoilers, but she did say for both women, “looks can be very deceiving, and neither of them are what they expect each other to be.”
Both actors were also asked how they approach their characters, as while Annie/Starlight and Hughie are decent people, they are forced by circumstance far out of their comfort—and moral—zones. For Hughie, that means dealing with tragedy and committing acts of mayhem that aren’t in his nature the way they seem to be for the rest of the Boys.
Quaid said that Hughie’s “a guy that tries to be nice to literally everyone around him, and everyone around him just either doesn’t want him there or thinks he’s inept. But in this season, I think Hughie tries to come into his own a lot more.” Quaid said that Hughie’s journey includes not only figuring out his own desires, but also finding “his own way of going about taking down Vought. I think he becomes a lot more capable this season.”
One of the hallmarks of “The Boys” is a lot of pop culture references and real-world satire, as well as satire of the whole superhero mystique. Moriarty and Quaid were asked about those elements of the show and how it relates to their characters. For instance, in season one, Starlight was forced to wear a skimpier outfit as part of being in The Seven, as well as forced into other situations where she was objectified.
Moriarty said that she leans into the satire. “I think when anyone is young, they kind of try on different hats,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out who they are.”
“And so maybe yes, I had moments that felt a little artificial to myself when it came to the ways I was participating in the entertainment industry, and certain things on the social media or publicity front. But I would say I’m lucky because I haven’t had a job yet that’s made me feel like I’ve had to really sacrifice myself like [Starlight] does,” she continued. “So I really lean into that satirical nature and that sort of double life that to me is more imaginary and more of an ‘as if’ than an actual personal experience.”
Hughie doesn’t have to contend with objectification; instead, he is, as Quaid says, “a total nerd” who drops pop culture references left and right because of his nerdiness.
“I wanted to have the sense that he had this whole life before the show started,” Quaid said. For example, Hughie was “into superheroes before he realized just how devious they were.” Another thing Hughie is into? Billy Joel.
“We do get a little bit more context about his fascination with Billy Joel this season,” Quaid revealed, then shared a quick backstory about it.
“I find this is just a testament to Eric Kripke and how amazing he is,” he said, then referred to an early scene in the first season where Butcher wants Hughie to bug in the Seven’s tower. Quaid said that he was told he could improvise, which he did. “I had this whole thing about James Taylor. And then Eric said [to] make the list James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, [and] Billy Joel.”
“Something about Billy Joel just stuck to the point where it was Hughie’s whole character. The last thing he says to Robin before she dies is, ‘Don’t you ever besmirch Billy Joel,’ and that’s because of that little bit that we did the day previous.”
“And now I’m seeing ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ in the season two teaser trailer,” he remarked.
Speaking of that teaser trailer and the whale of a time the Boys have, Quaid had been asked what it was like to film that scene. As one might imagine on a show that can be as gory as “The Boys” is, it was “insane,” he said.
Quaid used a gaming analogy to describe it. “I got to like level 10 of having blood on me” in the first season, he said, but “that was the tutorial level of blood; prepare for the boss fight.”
Quaid gave as an example the scene where he blew up Transclucent (Alex Hassell) in season one; he could easily clean himself up because it was “that take and that was it. This season,” he noted, “specifically for the whale episode, I started my day in the hair and makeup trailer, having blood meticulously applied [because it] needs to match the previous day’s blood. So I spent weeks in it this time around and that was new. It was very sticky, but Head & Shoulders shampoo really helped get it out.”
As for the recently announced third season pick-up, Quaid said he “can only imagine what Eric has in store for me.”
“I don’t know. I think we should just have a blood shower on set at this point,” he said. “Like, just come in and be like [Quaid makes shower spraying noises and gestures] and then get to work.”
Amazon Prime Video’s hit series, “The Boys,” returns September 4, 2020, for a second season of mayhem, fun, and trust issues covered in blood, with three episodes being available at once, followed by one-per-week for the rest of the season
Quotes lightly edited for flow and clarity
The post Erin Moriarty and Jack Quaid: Trust Issues and A Shower of Blood on Season Two of “The Boys” appeared first on The Nerd Element.
By Désirée I. Guzzetta
Jack Quaid and Erin Moriarty had both been working steadily prior to landing their roles as Hughie Campbell and Annie January/Starlight, respectively, on Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys.” Most recently, Quaid voiced several characters, including Richie Rich, on the animated show, “Harvey Girls Forever!” and is now also voicing Ensign Boimler on the new animated series, “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
Among Moriarty’s stand-out roles were Audrey Hart, daughter of Woody Harrelson’s Marty, on season one of “True Detective” (2014), and Hope Shlottman on a season of “Jessica Jones” (2015). Before starring opposite each other on “The Boys,” in fact, she and Quaid also appeared together in a video short in 2018, “Creedence Clearwater Revival: Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”
The two were paired together to discuss their roles on “The Boys” in a recent Zoom roundtable interview. When we last them in character, Annie and Hughie were estranged. Though Hughie had real feelings for Annie, especially after their “meet cute” on the park bench in the first episode when he didn’t know she was Starlight, he’d betrayed her trust too much for her to forgive him. Moriarty and Quaid, however, have an easy camaraderie.
The Nerd Element asked them if Annie and Hughie could ever regain their trust in one another during the upcoming second season.
Quaid, who said Hughie “one-thousand percent trusts Annie [because] he was the one that messed up,” deferred to Moriarty for her answer.
“That’s kind of the big question, honestly, between them,” Moriarty said. “The reality is that’s the question that needs to be answered as the episodes roll out. There’s no way of answering it without giving away spoilers, but I will say that a lot of Annie’s trajectory this season is trying to—she’s compensating for what happened to her last season.”
Moriarty said that Annie “feels kind of stupid for the extent of how much she trusted people, which I’m not saying is necessarily correct. But I think we often go through that when we’ve been heartbroken by the people we love the most when we find out they’ve lied to us.”
“So now she’s got this thick wall up,” Moriarty continued, “and I think she is overcompensating for the violation of trust against her. I think as the season progresses, she’s able to slowly thin that wall.” Moriarty said that Hughie will still be a good guy, which Annie is “less able to deny that as the season goes on.” But she didn’t want to be definitive to avoid spoiling the two’s upcoming journey.
While Hughie is a good person, he’s also someone the audience has already seen slowly unraveling, first with the death of his girlfriend, Robin (Jess Salgueiro), when A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) literally runs through her, and then when he slowly has to compromise some of his morality thanks to the situations Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the leader of the Boys, puts him in.
Quaid was asked about Hughie’s mental state, given all that’s happened to him and what was shown in the trailer for the new season (i.e., stuck in a boat that plows through a whale).
“Will he survive with his sanity intact?” Quaid responded, laughing. “That’s the ever-lingering question. I think [showrunner] Eric Kripke is basically just trolling me at this point. He will do anything to traumatize this poor kid.”
Quaid pointed out that Hughie starts the new season “in a low place. He has less than he did at the beginning of season one—all of his friends are thinking about leaving him and abandoning the cause.” Even the return of Butcher, who’s been his mentor, doesn’t make Hughie feel all that much better.
Hughie “sees through the veil that” Butcher projects, Quaid said, and knows that he cannot trust the man. He noted that Hughie has a long road ahead of him to recover from everything he’s already been through.
“You know, I often think that season one Hughie is about anxiety, and season two Hughie is about depression,” Quaid said.
Moriarty was asked if Starlight will continue her attempts to take down Vought International, the company that created The Seven, the team of superheroes she joined, and if Starlight would be willing to do so openly. Moriarty pointed out that Starlight already called out what The Deep (Chace Crawford) did to her, and it wound up burnishing her image.
However, Starlight has a new “supe” to contend with, Aya Cash’s Stormfront. “We see that [Stormfront’s] got this rebellious nature about herself that’s kind of anti-Vought, but they still hire her and they like it because it’s this fresh new energy,” Moriarty said, adding “so I will say that publicly coming out—making a speech or a public display of going against Vought—I don’t think is going to be Starlight’s method of trying to take them down. I think it’s going to need to be more covert.”
Moriarty was also asked what Starlight’s relationship with Stormfront would be like, especially given Stormfront’s devil-may-care attitude versus Starlight’s more conservative nature.
“I think the apparently cool thing about Stormfront is we meet her and she’s the first person who, upon meeting Homelander (Antony Starr), [is] not impressed at all. Being introduced to anything that’s Vought-related, she ain’t impressed,” she said.
Moriarty revealed that Stormfront calls Starlight “a Vought Barbie. You get the impression that she thinks [all of The Seven are] Vought puppets, so Starlight actually respects that.”
Starlight, however, knows she has to keep her own actions against Vought secret, and she’s not about to drop her guard, even if she finds Stormfront’s attitude refreshing.
“I would say the beginning dynamic is one in which Starlight is trying to pursue an allyship and Stormfront doesn’t reciprocate that, but both of them have a facade and both of those facades are kind of ripped away to each other as the season progresses.” Moriarty could not reveal more without giving out spoilers, but she did say for both women, “looks can be very deceiving, and neither of them are what they expect each other to be.”
Both actors were also asked how they approach their characters, as while Annie/Starlight and Hughie are decent people, they are forced by circumstance far out of their comfort—and moral—zones. For Hughie, that means dealing with tragedy and committing acts of mayhem that aren’t in his nature the way they seem to be for the rest of the Boys.
Quaid said that Hughie’s “a guy that tries to be nice to literally everyone around him, and everyone around him just either doesn’t want him there or thinks he’s inept. But in this season, I think Hughie tries to come into his own a lot more.” Quaid said that Hughie’s journey includes not only figuring out his own desires, but also finding “his own way of going about taking down Vought. I think he becomes a lot more capable this season.”
One of the hallmarks of “The Boys” is a lot of pop culture references and real-world satire, as well as satire of the whole superhero mystique. Moriarty and Quaid were asked about those elements of the show and how it relates to their characters. For instance, in season one, Starlight was forced to wear a skimpier outfit as part of being in The Seven, as well as forced into other situations where she was objectified.
Moriarty said that she leans into the satire. “I think when anyone is young, they kind of try on different hats,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out who they are.”
“And so maybe yes, I had moments that felt a little artificial to myself when it came to the ways I was participating in the entertainment industry, and certain things on the social media or publicity front. But I would say I’m lucky because I haven’t had a job yet that’s made me feel like I’ve had to really sacrifice myself like [Starlight] does,” she continued. “So I really lean into that satirical nature and that sort of double life that to me is more imaginary and more of an ‘as if’ than an actual personal experience.”
Hughie doesn’t have to contend with objectification; instead, he is, as Quaid says, “a total nerd” who drops pop culture references left and right because of his nerdiness.
“I wanted to have the sense that he had this whole life before the show started,” Quaid said. For example, Hughie was “into superheroes before he realized just how devious they were.” Another thing Hughie is into? Billy Joel.
“We do get a little bit more context about his fascination with Billy Joel this season,” Quaid revealed, then shared a quick backstory about it.
“I find this is just a testament to Eric Kripke and how amazing he is,” he said, then referred to an early scene in the first season where Butcher wants Hughie to bug in the Seven’s tower. Quaid said that he was told he could improvise, which he did. “I had this whole thing about James Taylor. And then Eric said [to] make the list James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, [and] Billy Joel.”
“Something about Billy Joel just stuck to the point where it was Hughie’s whole character. The last thing he says to Robin before she dies is, ‘Don’t you ever besmirch Billy Joel,’ and that’s because of that little bit that we did the day previous.”
“And now I’m seeing ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ in the season two teaser trailer,” he remarked.
Speaking of that teaser trailer and the whale of a time the Boys have, Quaid had been asked what it was like to film that scene. As one might imagine on a show that can be as gory as “The Boys” is, it was “insane,” he said.
Quaid used a gaming analogy to describe it. “I got to like level 10 of having blood on me” in the first season, he said, but “that was the tutorial level of blood; prepare for the boss fight.”
Quaid gave as an example the scene where he blew up Transclucent (Alex Hassell) in season one; he could easily clean himself up because it was “that take and that was it. This season,” he noted, “specifically for the whale episode, I started my day in the hair and makeup trailer, having blood meticulously applied [because it] needs to match the previous day’s blood. So I spent weeks in it this time around and that was new. It was very sticky, but Head & Shoulders shampoo really helped get it out.”
As for the recently announced third season pick-up, Quaid said he “can only imagine what Eric has in store for me.”
“I don’t know. I think we should just have a blood shower on set at this point,” he said. “Like, just come in and be like [Quaid makes shower spraying noises and gestures] and then get to work.”
Amazon Prime Video’s hit series, “The Boys,” returns September 4, 2020, for a second season of mayhem, fun, and trust issues covered in blood, with three episodes being available at once, followed by one-per-week for the rest of the season
Quotes lightly edited for flow and clarity
The post Erin Moriarty and Jack Quaid: Trust Issues and A Shower of Blood on Season Two of “The Boys” appeared first on The Nerd Element.
During a dynamic panel Thursday morning, “From the Base to the Face of the Democratic Party: Kamala Harris, Black Women, & Misogynoir,” six Black women joined together for a robust conversation breaking down a historic night for Sen. Harris (D-California), the first Black woman to be nominated for vice-president of a major political party.
Harris accepted her nomination Wednesday night—Day 3 of the Democratic National Convention—standing behind a podium at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware. Reporters stood the appropriate social distance away documenting the moment for posterity; but, Kimberlé Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, noticed something missing in the post-Convention coverage: Black women’s voices.
“Already a pattern has developed in which Black women who are journalists, elected officials, and academics serve as informants to conversations in which they are underrepresented,” Crenshaw said in statement. “It was past time to bring Black women together to discuss the politics, the election, Kamala Harris’ historic run, and the intersections of race and gender playing out in the Presidential campaign.”
Crenshaw, the creator of the #SayHerName campaign, gathered Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Barbara R. Arnwine (president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition), Donna Brazile (veteran Democratic political strategist, adjunct professor and author), Kimberly M. Foxx (State’s Attorney for Cook County, Illinois), and Kirsten West Savali (executive producer at ESSENCE Magazine) to discuss.
TOPSHOT – Senator from California and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during the third day of the Democratic National Convention, being held virtually amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware on August 19, 2020. (Photo by Olivier DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)The dialogue, situated firmly within the historic and future implications of the senator’s nomination, ranged from the misogynoir that Harris faces to the progressive critique of her candidacy, to a deep dive into the politics of representation.
From the Combahee River Collective to Shirley Chisholm to the isolation that Black women in power too often feel, each woman brought her unique perspective to a conversation that was long overdue.
.@sandylocks: “If Black women don’t reclaim this moment, if we don’t counter-galvanize against a mainstream discourse that would make Harris’ candidacy nothing more than a symbol, then this moment is a loss. We are determined to have our say.” #whenblackwomenenter #DNC2020
— African American Policy Forum (@AAPolicyForum) August 20, 2020Watch the powerful discussion below:
The post African American Policy Forum Holds Town Hall To Discuss Kamala Harris’ Historic VP Nomination appeared first on Essence.
Let’s start off with this, any book that has a character who’s referred to as the Gandalf of Harlem wins. In fact, if I ever became superstar, and I was performing at a club in Miama, it would be in the rider of my contract, that I would have to be introduced as The Gandalf of Harlem, despite the fact that I’m from Maryland and I learn more towards Dark Elf Battle Mage than Middle Earth Merlin wizard.
Maurice Broaddus and the NeoText Writers room put together a gem of a novella in Sorcerers. One hundred pages, no fat on the bone, this was a neat, tight, get in/get out type of tale. I used to be very suspicious of novellas, I didn’t think you could get a complete story in that small amount of space. I worried that authors would be writing in a straitjacket, confined by the slashed page-count with very little room for character development, but Broaddus & company really stomp a Steve Austin mudhole that supposition.
Sorcerers takes place in New York City, and it’s the first Urban Fantasy I’ve read that really focuses on hip-hop as a way to move the plot and the characters forward. Jemisin does this a bit in The City We Became, but while hip-hop is a rider in that story, it’s the driver here. Our main character Malik is a ghostwriter and drops bars for up and coming & established rappers. Malik’s Wolf of Wall Street choices land him in hot water and he turns to his grandfather, beloved city activist and Malik’s own personal Ben Kenobi for advice.
The rest of the story unfolds really quickly without feeling rushed. I think a clever move by the authors was to push us through the city with Malik as he tries to keep one step ahead of his problems, Malik’s hyper focus really helped mask how quickly we were moving through the story, one minute I’m reading about Malik’s one on one with Sorcerer’s version of Suge Knight, the next thing I know I’m in the “about the authors” section of the book, trying to figure out when part 2 is dropping. All in all, I really enjoyed the pacing, the use of the city and hip-hop as characters, and the overall story of Malik the ghostwriter, I’m anxiously awaiting Broaddus and the NeoText Writers next installment in the series, while we’re waiting….go get this book!
RATING- 4.5/5
Check out NeoText’s website for all the latest (and more about what Broaddus up to at mauricebroaddus.com).
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The post Review: Urban Fantasy Novella ‘Sorcerers’ Will Leave You SpellBound appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.