Moon Knight Superfan and Movie Mumble co-host Joel T. Lewis had the opportunity to sit down with the Academy Award Nominated Hair and Make-up Designer Donald Mowat about his work on the Moon Knight Series!!! You can see Donald Mowat’s work in Moon Knight on DisneyPlus, Dune, Blade Runner 2049, Nightcrawler, and Skyfall!

Young Justice and Steven Universe Future. Currently, Taneka serves as the story editor on the Apple TV+/Dreamworks series, Pinecone & Pony, and we here at NTG were lucky enough to talk with Taneka about her latest project.

John Betancourt: What was it that attracted you to working on Pinecone & Pony?
 
Taneka Stotts: Pinecone! Legitimately I fell in love with Pinecone before Pony, before Sturdystone, and before even being hired. I read an amazing story bible about a little girl, that I resonated with so deep to my core, it couldn't be possible that she was real. Funny, smart, a crybaby with a heart of gold. She lives life warrior style, and it doesn't mean with your muscles, money, or title, but instead it's with your honesty, heart, and one pony toot per episode!
 
John Betancourt: Now to educate myself and others out there, could you by chance walk us through what a story editor's role is on a television show?
 
Taneka Stotts: Oh of course. A story editor's role is like being an assistant to a showrunner, or sometimes it's the role you're given as the showrunner. I find it depends on the production or studio employing it, how it will be utilized by the person given that title. As a story editor, I found myself to be the official consistency checker, to make sure the cohesion of all the storylines kept to their beats. I wrote episodes, I pitched episodes, I edited episodes (not just my own), I helped others construct their episodes (built out the world), I tracked episodic progress, I sat in on records, I provided dialogue punch-up and alternatives for us to discuss and employ into our work. It's a very interesting role and I absolutely love it, it definitely prepares you for the role above that.
 
John Betancourt: Now this is a series full of wonderful messages and concepts, how much influence did you have on injecting those messages into the story as both a writer and story editor?
 
Taneka Stotts: I don't want to toot my own horn, that's Pony's job, but I gave this show my all. I don't want to take credit for doing this or doing that. I think there are enough people who do that already, without really thinking about the people that it neglects in the process to creating animation. The writer's room starts a conversation, but the boarders, the PA's, the random pitch for a punch up from an intern, their voices are the volume that adds to the weight of what we do. So, my influence is there, as is every voice that was in that room, and I couldn't be prouder of how it came out. I was grateful that my influence was allowed to be heard, respected, and I out found that my co-workers thought the same way too.
 
John Betancourt: Speaking of messaging, what is the message that resonated with you the most when it comes to this series?
 
Taneka Stotts: Be yourself. It's an ancient adage that still rings true, and it's still evident for today's youth as it was for mine and many more before and after us. I found that Pinecone and Pony both instilled that message upon the show very deeply. It sounds so easy, but sometimes it's one of the hardest things you feel you get to actually do.
 
John Betancourt: What does it mean to you to be a part of a series that is teaching children such wonderful lessons about the world and life?
 
Taneka Stotts: It means the world to me. I grew up watching television constantly, many people told me that it would rot my brain. But here I am just writing every day, still using my brain. Honestly though, I enjoy knowing that the messages we threaded throughout the show, born from pure kindness, are out there and that its resonating with kids and parents of all walks of life, it's really awesome!
 
John Betancourt: What are you most proud of when it comes to your work on this series?
 
Taneka Stotts: Can I just say everything? Because literally it's everything. The message, the animation, the writing, the boarding, the voice acting, the cast, the crew, our executives, and just this opportunity to make a series you have always wanted to see exist. If I have to name one thing though and stick to it... it would be our inclusivity. The lengths in which we all went to make something authentic, fun, and just what we were craving in this timeline. Something we needed and we were so happy we got to share with an audience.
 
John Betancourt: What do you hope audiences take away from this show?
 
Taneka Stotts: Find what makes you feel like a warrior and cherish it. Be bold, be kind, and just be yourself. 

The indie comedy duo Syd & Mike recently took SeriesFest 8 by storm by winning the Late Night Audience Choice Award for their pilot, and we here at Nerds That Geek had the chance to talk to this pair of talented comedians and their collaborator Carl Conway after their glorious win to discuss all things Syd & Mike.
​
John Betancourt: First, thank you so much for your time today. I really loved the pilot. It was so much fun.

Mike: Which sketch was your favorite?
​
John: The nature one. That is… that is definitely me.

Mike: Which one is you, the one that does want to go hiking? Or the one that doesn’t want to go?

John: The one that doesn’t want to go. To me, roughing it is staying at a Motel Six. And on that note, let’s get started! Carl let’s talk about how you got involved with the show.

Carl: Well, so the creation of Syd & Mike goes back before I was involved, and they can give you a little bit of history on how they met but as far as this iteration, the big origin story point for me is we were in the pandemic, you know, I think pandemic 2.0. It was spring of 2021 and we got on the Clubhouse app because you couldn't go out of our houses, and it was still kind of cold. And Clubhouse is where you get to have audio chats with random people, we were going into these somewhat nightmarish filmmaking and television, networking rooms and talking to people who were claiming to be experts on how to get a deal. How to make it in the business. And Syd… actually she put herself on stage. Which is the place where you go in in Clubhouse to actually talk and ask some questions. And we found ourselves kind of getting blown off by these people who it turns out we're just sort of like wanting to gain their followers on Clubhouse.

But Steve Pink who directed Hot Tub Time Machine and he wrote High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank reached out to us on the side and said, “You know, I think those people kind of didn't really listen to you, but I looked at your stuff. I think it's great.” And we had a zoom call with him, and we were like talking about what we wanted to do next. And his advice was to take stock of what we had done already. And that was a really great piece of advice. Like we went in and looked at all of our work. We had been doing a lot of stoner comedy and cannabis bits. And he gave us some advice too, you know, like that we could broaden our horizons, you know, on comedy that we could just do comedy and not stoner comedy. And so, in the process of looking at what we had done, we noticed that we had made a lot of sketch comedy, and we feel, we all felt really comfortable in the sketch world, and we love short, fast, and funny. And so, we decided let's spend some time writing sketches and that's sort of the beginning of what this particular project is.

John: Now Syd and Mike, what brought you together to start doing comedy in the first place?

Mike: Well, we met in an acting class in 2010. And we got paired up together for a scene and we realized that we definitely had like a bit of chemistry right off the bat. And one night, I was at home, and I was stoned and actually watching TV, and I was watching The Biggest Loser and I would chuckle to myself. I said, “I could be on the show. I could win this show.” And at the time I was thin. I was like 160 pounds or something. And I was like, “but I'd have to get really fat for this to win.” And that that made me really laugh. So, I called Syd up immediately. And I told her I was like, “What if we did like a mockumentary where we were trying to get on to The Biggest Loser and we're training as if, the same way they trained to lose weight. We're doing the opposite. Try and gain weight so we can audition for the show”, and we had a really good laugh about that. The next day she comes over and we wrote nine pages in a sitting, and we basically shot what we what we wrote in that session, minus some tweaks here and there. And we shot it within like a month, you know, totally naive to how difficult what we're setting out to do and we were really pleased with the final product. It came out really well.

You know, it's still pretty decent for especially for a first thing. Anyway, you know, we kind of went our separate ways a little bit and worked with other peoples. Syd moved to LA. We worked with other people. And we quickly realized that it was much harder--it's really hard to write with people. And then, you know, we realized maybe what we had was special. Flash forward a few years, she moves back to New York and we write another concept called Syrah. What is Syrah?? It's the Metro PCS version of Siri. Like the, you know, the no frills Siri. She's a little bit aggressive and stuff and we wrote that one, it came out fantastic, that started getting us into film festivals. And then we joined up with this filmmaking collective and that's where we actually met Carl. And it was a collective of creators that were making videos and challenging ourselves in genre to make short films that we would all then have a big screening. We did like 10 of these things and they were incredible, really talented people, a lot of people who are still in the business in the industry working today. So soon I made two more, I think two more films for that which then, coincidentally started getting into festivals. And then somebody at a festival was like “what are you guys doing with this series?”  and we're like, “what series?” and they're like “this Syd & Mike” and we're like, “Oh, it's not a series. It’s short films.” And then we're like, “Wait a second, maybe this can be a series.” So, then we you know, we started we started making videos. We wrote a web series. And we… this is a long version of this story. Sorry. And in order to crowdfund, we were going to crowdfund for this web series, and in order to do that, we wanted to make some videos to start an Instagram page.

So, we wrote like these 10 videos, and then three of them I believe we shot with Carl and one of those three was Lavender Air Freshener, and that video would go on to do… it went… it did 13 million views on our Facebook. You know what, that was the first one that broke out, so it started off, you know, normal. It was like 5000 views and then it was like 10,000 views and it was going and going, and Syd said to me, “you know I think this one's gonna go viral.” Yeah, and anyway, so you know, sorry for such a long story. Long story short, I guess you can't say that after you told them. But we had a bunch of viral success which was really tantalizing to us. And so, we convinced ourselves that we could take that web series and turn it into a full-length series. And, so we retooled that, and we kept making internet videos. We did like 50 of those. Anyway, that's, that's where we met and then and then we brought Carl on. It was so it was so great working with Carl. He's such a like a crucial part of the team that like we brought him on, you know, full time and we’re three-way partners now since 2017. I believe.

Syd: You used the word “tantalizing”, Mike. I’m still recovering. -laughter-

Carl: You also said, “three-way partners”. Which means different things in different circles. -laughter from everyone-

Mike: You know… off the record… we do three ways. -more laughter from everyone-

John: Oh no. It’s all on the record now.

Mike: It’s out there now, guys!

John: So, what motivated you all to take these sketches and put them into a pilot?

Syd: So, after Clubhouses, Carl was mentioning last spring about a year ago. We started getting together and the three of us would come in and submit 10 sketch ideas a week. Start picking some to write out and then we had a bunch to choose from. This particular five that we chose, you know, we make our own stuff. So it was, who was available, the resources we had, when we could shoot them and shooting the sketches was a little bit easier than… you know can shoot one at a time and then put them together, and we have gone through different iterations of like, “are we just going to put the five together? Will there be a narrative aspect to it?”

You know, we discussed lots of different things to do. And at the end, this ended up being more of a proof of concept. So, here's five sketches of all these friends and where we have so many more written and, you know, honestly hundreds of ideas going… and we like to keep it fresh. So, kind of what's relevant, what can stay relevant, and also open to you know, more narrative aspects to be mixed in with this. And we just, yeah, went forth and thought, “Alright, let's, let's try to see where these can play.” It was like, “Okay, well, maybe some film festivals won't play these all together.” They can just choose one and maybe play one of them instead of the whole pilot, and then SeriesFest was just a great opportunity. We got really lucky that they ended up choosing to play all five sketches as a pilot, and I think it's a great representation of us. Does that make sense?

John: It makes total sense. What I liked about it too, was that it was such a diverse set of sketches.

Syd: Everybody has a favorite. I love that Mike asked what your favorite was. And I think that's been so cool that there hasn't been one of them that people gravitate towards. Really every single person has a different one that they love. And to me it just shows that you know we can reach different people and, and that we're not just doing like one thing, right? That we can go all over the place.

John: Now you mentioned keeping it fresh and relevant, and that’s something that I noticed too… was that this pilot has a lot of commentary and satire. What influenced that?

Mike: We’re always challenging ourselves to come up with new ideas. Especially I mean, Carl is really exceptional at challenging us to throw out old ideas and keep on like making new stuff and so when you're forced to make new stuff, the way Carl forces us to. -laughter- You know, you stay pretty relevant because like you're getting an idea, you know, out in the world of something that happens, you know, currently and then you're commenting on that or building jokes around that kind of stuff. So, I think by design, it stays pretty fresh, and I really like that he challenges us to do it that way because it feels… relevant.

John: What did it mean to all of you, to watch this with an audience… and see their reaction, live?

Carl: So yeah, the ability to watch this pilot with an audience is amazing, because like we've been saying, everybody has a different favorite. And also, it's five sketches in 15 minutes, so they come at you fast and it's tight. You know, like we pride ourselves in having really tight you know, economical edits of our comedy and doing it in a super polished way. That allows for like… nobody has time to question what we're doing; you just have to come along for the ride. And that that's been the goal, and then to finally sit with an audience and watch it with an audience who clearly enjoyed it. I think, you know, I think you might have been we might have already told you or Matthew might have already told you, that we've won the Audience Award for our blocks.

John: That’s incredible. Congratulations.

Carl: Oh, it was yeah, we're award-winning sketch writers you know, so yeah, that’s nothing to kick rocks at. -laughter- But yeah, it was amazing. I guess that's the best part is like just watching it. Because we knew how tight and fast and how much comedy we were trying to pack into each one. I think we all knew that it was gonna be really fun to watch it with an audience and it really was.
Mike: I mean, yeah, SeriesFest was one of the festivals at the top of our list. And to get in there was really exciting for us. And humbling, and you know, an incredible… an incredible experience. It's a real amazing community of creatives and filmmakers and, and series writers there and our peers put up amazing work and so to get that audience award was really special because we really did respect everybody that was in the block with us. And as comedy creators, they're all like forces to be reckoned with, on their own. And so, to really be recognized by the audience… is something that is really special to us. Like we did this for the people. So, yeah… it was really special. It meant a lot to us.

Syd: That covers it really well. Yeah, really special. It was just a really special experience.

Mike: Wait, should I say it? You want my catch phrase?

Carl: Yeah!

Mike: Yeah, it's like, watching it with an audience? We realized. We know. That our shit, hits. -laughter from everyone-

John: Oh man. That’s a great tagline. “Syd & Mike. This shit hits.”

Syd: Oh! I'm gonna add one thing that I think was mentioned, like after our screening, at a little party… there's something to be said for mine and Mike's really long friendship and how close we are and Carl really, since he started working with us. He recognized that and is then able to speak that language and the three of us are really close friends, and I think that that shows through our work.

John: You’re absolutely right. There’s a really, fun friend vibe to it, I’m sure that helps the audience get into it.

Mike: Oh yeah. We’re besties, IRL. -laughter-

John: Best friends for life? The Biffles? I love that. So, last question. What’s next for the show?

Syd: We're gonna get picked up, obviously! -laughter- Make big money. Someone else can speak to that. We have some other festivals coming up. And the hope is to get you know, relationships with the industry and build our team and build our resources and continue to make the show.

Mike: We're really looking for strategic collaborators, in a production company. We've got our sights set on some production companies that have like a long history of producing incredible sketch shows. And so, we're really hoping to be able to work with one of those. And, you know, we want to work with people that can challenge us to elevate our material even further.

Carl: We want to build our audience, too. We want to find opportunities to make more stuff. It's just that you know… like they said we have a lot of stuff written, we've got a lot of ideas and we know that because of how much this let's say, this shit hits, our other shit will hit as well. -laughter- So, we're very excited to Keep building an audience on top of like building our momentum as creators and as people in the industry.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

​Last week, not only did Nerds That Geek have the honor of spending time at the Red-Carpet Premiere of STARZ’s Becoming Elizabeth at SeriesFest 8 at the Sie FilmCenter… but we were also able to speak with the show’s creator Anya Reiss and stars Alicia von Rittberg and Jamie Blackley regarding this show and its big premiere.

John Betancourt: What inspired you to put the show together in the first place?
 
Anya Reiss: I didn't know this story. I thought I knew the story of Elizabeth the First. And I found it really exciting the idea of it being led by characters and being just a character development study, because we all know what happens. But this gave me real freedom for it to be about why this thing happened, and who are people, which, I feel like… usually in history shows, you just have to hit the events. And this felt like something really different.
 
John Betancourt: What kind of research did you do to really flesh everything out?
 
Anya Reiss: I read a lot of letters and speeches and anything, where I could hear their voices, because I felt like, I mean, we were not making stuff up. These are things that happened. But it felt really important to me to just kind of get a sense of who they were as humans. And then they were my playthings after that. -laughter-
 
John Betancourt: What kind of liberties did you take with the story, once you reached the end of what research could offer?
 
Anya Reiss: I mean, I hope not too many. I think… it's mainly… the liberties that are taken, are because there are gaps, so you have to make a call. You can't really go; “did they, didn't they?” when you're making a show. So, we made some calls on what happened. And I suppose it was just the most interesting story that felt relevant to us, to kind of use our guidance, but I think we tried very hard not to, not to make a false version of history.
 
John Betancourt: What was the biggest challenge you ran into in assembling the story?
 
Anya Reiss: I suppose, reserving judgment on the characters. Because I think the best kind of writing doesn't tell you what to think about people. But it didn't stop me from thinking. So, I think I sometimes find it a little bit hard not to go… “he’s an asshole!” -laughter-

John Betancourt: How excited are you to be here tonight?
 
Alicia von Rittberg: So excited. I'm incredibly excited. It's… it's so cool. I spent the whole day in Denver, and I loved it. And yeah, can't wait for the audience to watch it.
 
John Betancourt: What was it that attracted you to this role, as an actor?
 
Alicia von Rittberg: Oh, well, I think if you if you get a chance to play a complex character, like Elizabeth the First, it's just something… I could only dream of and playing her during a time that wasn't really told before… is more exciting. And the scripts are amazing, and they told me I could get red hair. So, (laughs) I’m sold!
 
John Betancourt: Yes! In disguise! What are you most excited for folks to experience watching this?
 
Alicia von Rittberg: There's just nothing comparable to watching it with an audience and just like, I don't know, experiencing it… with them. Seeing where they laugh, where they… I don't know… what just happens in the room. So that's, that is very exciting. And we worked on it for like two years!

John Betancourt: How excited are you for everyone to experience this tonight?
 
Jamie Blackley: I'm really excited. I mean, there is kind of apprehension as well, which I think is just natural. You know, to see it in front of an audience for the first time, but it'll be good. It'll be really good. I’m really excited.
 
John Betancourt: What attracted you as an actor to this show?
 
Jamie Blackley: I think it was… it being a period of Elizabeth's life that hasn't been explored before, and it didn’t feel like kind of a rehashing of, you know, old stories. The cast is just really exciting. So many people that I admire and look up to, and I've seen so much of their work, and then to be at work with them was just awesome. And I just think that, you know, the creative team was really exciting. And it felt like they wanted to tell the story in the right way, which is just the dream.
 
John Betancourt: What are most excited for fans to experience?
 
Jamie Blackley: I just think, to experience like the feel of the show, it feels… you know, the feeling of it is to try and throw you into a world that is really dangerous. You know, there's glitz in there. But it is a really dangerous world where you can say the wrong thing, and everything can go wrong. So, I'm excited for them to experience that. And it's funny, you know, it’s really funny.
 
These interviews have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Connie Berry has a brand-new book out entitled The Shadow of Memory, and we here at NTG were able to speak with Connie about her new novel and creative writing in general!

Nerds That Geek: What is it that inspired the creation of The Shadow of Memory?

Connie Berry: Some plots are pure fiction, created out of whole cloth in the author’s imagination. Others, like The Shadow of Memory, are inspired by real-life events. My first inspiration was a 2002 episode of “This American Life” with Ira Glass. The show, “House on Loon Lake,” told the story of several young boys in the nineteen seventies who broke into a mysterious abandoned house in New Hampshire. What fascinated me was the idea of a time capsule—a house, containing the furniture and personal effects of a family, left exactly as they had been in the past. Why was the house abandoned? What had happened to the people who lived there?

My second inspiration came from Bill Bryson’s very funny book, The Road to Little Dribbling, where he talks about taking a job as an orderly in a mental hospital organized around a novel theory in the treatment of mental illness. That sent me on a deep dive into Victorian mental hospitals. I learned that a number of private institutions were built in the mid- to late-nineteenth century for fee-paying patients among the British middle classes. With the advent of the National Health Service, these private hospitals couldn’t complete. But the buildings were exceptionally beautiful, so many of them have been repurposed, some into luxury housing.

The final inspiration for The Shadow of Memory came from a news article I read about a Frans Hals painting, “Portrait of a Gentleman,” sold by Sotheby’s auction house in London to an American dealer for ten million dollars. With the help of modern technology, the painting was subsequently proven to be a forgery. At least four other “old masters” have been linked to the same (very talented) forger, and many more may be hanging in museums and private collections.

These three threads came together for me in an interesting way—and I hope interesting for readers.

NTG: What are you most excited for your readers to experience in this new book?

Connie Berry: First, I hope readers enjoy the three-layered mystery—the puzzle of a fifteenth-century painting attributed to Jan Van Eyck (is it what it appears to be?), a pair of sixty-year-old deaths which may or may not have been murder, and the deaths of three pensioners today, seemingly natural and unrelated until Kate finds the dark secret that ties them together.

NTG: Now that you are four books into the series, how much more story do you envision is left to tell in this saga?

Connie Berry: I don’t have an end point in mind. After all, who would have guessed that the seven books in Caroline Graham’s Midsomer series have now stretched to more than 128 television episodes. Ms. Graham reportedly “lost interest” in the series and decided to focus on screenplays instead, but the viewing public isn’t ready to let the series go. How many murders can take place in one small English county? As many as you like, apparently. Kate’s friend and landlady, Vivian Bunn, once remarked that rural Suffolk had no serious crime problem until Kate arrived. True. In each of the Kate books, I highlight one or more of the peripheral cast of characters, and there are plenty left to focus on. What if a diner dies in the middle of a meal at the Three Magpies gastropub and the police find poison in the sauce? Will the proprietors, Jayne and Gavin Collier, be charged? What if the newly married rector of St. Æthelric’s Church is accused of stabbing his elderly organist because she refused to play the hymns he requested?

And there’s also Kate herself. If she and DI Tom Mallory manage to tie the knot, what stresses will marriage bring? How about her as-yet-unresolved relationships with Tom’s mother, with his daughter, Olivia, and with her own children, Eric and Christine. The possibilities are endless. But series do seem to come to a natural conclusion. I hope I have the opportunity to find it.

NTG: What’s next for the series after this book, without any spoilers of course?

Connie Berry: I’m currently working on a possible fifth book in the series, which takes Kate and Tom to rural Devon, where a local history museum has asked them to verify the provenance of a blood-stained Victorian dress, said to have belonged to a lacemaker, suspected of murder. The dress was a gift to the museum from a “historical re-creator,” a man who dresses and lives like a Victorian gentleman. Is the dress what it purports to be, and was there a murder? No one was declared missing, and no body, human or animal, was ever found. So where did the blood come from? The accused woman refused to offer any explanation and died with her secret unrevealed.

NTG: Is there a particular type of story that you haven’t written yet that you’d love to tackle?

Connie Berry: I’ve always wanted to write a historical mystery, and as a matter of fact, I happen to have a new series in development, set in rural Hampshire, England, during the mid-Victorian era. The mid-nineteenth century brought major social and political changes to the UK as factories drew young people away from the farms and into the cities. Trade unions were organized, pitting the working class against the middle-class factory owners. Fortunes were made and lost. With new possibilities for employment emerging, women aspired to greater independence, laying the groundwork for the Suffrage Movement. New technologies and scientific discoveries significantly changed daily life. By 1830, Robert Peel had formed the Metropolitan Police in London. Nine years later, Parliament enabled justices of the peace to establish police forces in each county. In 1856, this became mandatory.
​
Against this turbulent backdrop, a woman of means sets out to redeem the lives of talented people who have been overlooked and marginalized by society. Together they solve crimes. Developing a new cast of characters is a challenge and a joy. And the research is great fun.

Season two of the runaway hit series Tehran is available to stream on Apple TV+ right now, and to continue to celebrate its triumphant return, here is our interview with the show’s Creator/Executive Producer, Dana Eden, and the show’s Director/Executive Producer, Daniel Syrkin.

John Betancourt: So, Dana, I was wondering if you could walk us through what led to the creation and overall production of the show?

Dana Eden:  Well, you know, I was sitting in my office one day, and I got an email, and the title was Tehran. And I said, “Oh, my God, that's an amazing title for a show, I wish that what's written inside will really live up to the title.” And in this, you know, script was the first scene of the show, you know, with the airplane. And I thought, “wow, that's an amazing start for this show.” And so, I really believed in the show from the very first moment, and the first season, although it was small Israeli production, for Israeli standards, it was quite big. So, we really had to struggle to make the first season. We believed it would be a success, but we couldn't imagine it would be such a global success. And of course, we wouldn't imagine that we will win the international Emmys, and best drama. So, everything that happened with this show was quite a roller coaster. And the fact that Apple joined us and contributed to the show… really made us better, I think, in the second season, because we could really elevate the production, we could then get Glenn Close, which is amazing for us. And, I think the first season was a hit, and I hope we'll have even more audiences watch the show in the second season.

John Betancourt: Daniel, what was it that attracted you to this project as a director?

Daniel Syrkin: Oh, it’s a really interesting project. When Dana told me, you know about the project and asked me to get on board. I was super excited because the word Tehran, it was a magical mysterious word. You know? And I had done a few espionage series before and it was kind of my genre, but, you know, Tehran felt like you know, the top story, the top subject you want to you want to talk about, especially because we're Israelis, and our news, as is your news, is full of Iran, Iranian stories, the Iranian menace, and then I realized I don't know much about it, and I really want to know a lot about it. And, you know, just going into research about Tehran, blew my… blew my mind because I realized that I knew nothing about it. All of it was stereotypes. Their language, their culture, Iran itself, the city of Tehran, everything was a misconception, you know, so just learning how interesting this nation is, how deep their culture is. And also learning about the hardships of the Iranian people about the oppressive regime, and how people find ways to still live in it. All of those were remarkable. And also, it was just, you know, great espionage story, this young woman born in Tehran, reminded me of myself, I was born in Moscow and came in as an immigrant to Israel and I thought that this story of immigration is a universal story that everybody in the world you know, can identify with. So, there are many good reasons for me to take this show.

John Betancourt: Now, I couldn’t help but notice… that the intensity this season is up to an eleven, when it was at about a nine in season one. What led to the decision to ramping the tension up in season two?

Dana Eden: We just want people to binge it. -laughter from Daniel and John-

John Betancourt: That will definitely do it.

Daniel Syrkin: That’s the best answer, Dana. But you know, both of us are very involved in the writing process. And I must say that this year working with Apple was really super interesting. It's promoted us immensely because you know, the work with Apple just makes you be the best at what you are. And we were really together, you know, chewing the screenplay, and making sure that there are no soft, soft spots, soft bellies, that it just goes on straight as an arrow. And then you know, as a director on set, you just always want to be one step in front of the audience to be just slightly smarter, but respect the audience and you know, leave those who like to think, to guess... give them those little clues. And of course, the pacing. The pacing is super important.

John Betancourt: Dana, as a creator and executive producer of the show… what kind of espionage and spy influences did you want to see injected to this show when you put it together?

Dana Eden: Um, we've made a lot of research, we met, ex Mossad, high ranking Mossad experts. And you know, these espionage stories are popping up in Israel all the time. It's part of our lives. And it was very important for us that the operations that the Mossad does in our series would be truthful and will be somehow close to the truth. So, you know, Israel is constructed with… a lot of people have been in the army and the Mossad in the intelligence. So, we want those people watch the show. And think, “oh, that's like, this operation the Mossad did!” and we don't want to embarrass ourselves to the Israelis. And so, I hope we achieved it.

Daniel Syrkin: I think we did a good job.

John Betancourt: I would say you did. Now, the last question I have for both of you today… is what are you most proud of when it comes to your time with the show?

Dana Eden: I think I'm proud of, first of all, bringing an Israeli show to be a global hit. For me, as a producer, or the creator… this is something I was always, I was dreaming about. And it's a dream come true. And, of course, the fact that we worked with Iranians on set, that it was a true international production, with Iranians, Greeks, Americans, Israelis, Iranian actors from all over the world. I think it was a great, humane production, and I feel that you'll see it on screen. And that's something we're really proud of.

Daniel Syrkin: I'm, just really happy that, you know, we made really what I think is, is an excellent show that we have a world base of fans and that we are a group of people who have been working for many years together and managed to take our talents out of this small country of Israel and show and put it on the world map with the help of Apple and others. And, you know, it makes us very proud.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Season two of Tehran on Apple TV+ is about to arrive on the airwaves and in anticipation of its release, we here at Nerds That Geek were granted quite the honor. In that we were able to speak with two of the show’s stars, Niv Sultan, who plays Tamar, and Glenn Close who plays Marjan, and here is what they what they had to say about season two. 

John Betancourt: What does it mean to both of you to be a part of a series that is both a phenomenon and revolutionary in nature?

Glenn Close: Well, look… this is the person who helped to make it that. -gestures toward Niv- So ,I mean, for me, it was so many firsts. A character like I'd never played before. Having to learn Farsi like I've never had before. Shooting in Athens with a multilingual cast. So, it was kind of a no brainer for me. When I read it. When I saw the first season, I thought, this is something I want to be part of.

Niv Sultan: And, for me, I can say that… obviously I'm only at the beginning of my career, it was a great opportunity and an amazing platform to tell the story and to portray this amazing character. And mostly I'm, you know, when I sit in my bliss in Tel Aviv, and I get messages, love messages from Iranian people, and I realized what we're doing here is bigger than another TV show or another step in my career. It feels big, it feels important. So, I'm grateful for that.

John Betancourt: Now, both of our characters are under constant duress and are surrounded by danger. How did both of you get prepare yourself mentally to play people in that kind of situation?

Niv Sultan: That’s a question… I can say that… shooting was really intense. Everything was really intense. I can't remember not even one scene where I came on set, and it was okay. That's an easy one. So, the tension was very, very high. And I was far from home. I wasn't in Israel, and I was surrounded by foreign people. It was a set full of culture and languages and mentalities. So, it really helped me to try to think how it was like to live as an agent far away from home, being a foreigner, and the tension really helped with the danger like... -turns to Glenn- we didn't feel danger during shooting…

Glenn Close: No, no.

Niv Sultan: But we did feel tense, in a way.

Glenn Close: I did a movie called Paradise Road once and played a woman who was in the evacuation of Singapore on a ship, having to jump into the ocean being strafed by Japanese, you know, airplanes and reading the true events, there's a lot of writing about that, the women didn't get hysterical the women got very quiet, very calm, did what had to be done, you know, protect their children. And I think the mindset of a of a good agent has that ability to find calm, and I've always thought maybe they have an amygdala that's not quite as active as others, because they can control their fight or flight or freeze, you know, reflex. And I think it's probably… learned, I think part of it, but I think a lot of it is natural. I mean, if you have the potential there.

John Betancourt: What are both most proud of when it comes to your time on this series?

Glenn Close: My Farsi. Boy, that was a real challenge. And I had a lot of help. I wanted to speak Farsi. So, a Farsi speaking person would be impressed. And so, I had two people always on set, listening in on their earphones, and sometimes we would just stay on a shot, and I would repeat it until it was perfect. So that that to me was… I'm told that that we all succeeded in that and I'm very proud of that.

Niv Sultan: I don't know… how to answer. I think I'm obviously I'm very proud of the show, but I'm not sure I'm in the position to understand what I'm proud of in my work. I just... I really feel that I love… I love Tamar. I feel her in me. I love this character so much. And maybe this is a good beginning.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.  

This week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead on AMC brought forth some serious surprises. For we came to learn that the normally wily Daniel Salazar is still struggling cognitively and from a mental health standpoint, and that some members of the group are willing to exploit that for their own gain. And in order to learn a little more about the gravity of Luciana’s decision in ‘Ofelia’, we sat down with Rubén Blades, Danay Garcia, and Colby Hollman to discuss this pivotal episode.
​
John Betancourt: I was actually curious what it kind of means to each of you to be a part of an episode that really tackled some topics that are quite frankly, are kind of taboo on television. Because don't we don't talk about ageism in TV all that often, nor do we talk about mental health and cognitive decline.

Rubén Blades: That’s one thing I have to say as far as the experience with the show, when we did the episode where it was all in Spanish, in the third season, I think it was, that was groundbreaking in itself, because I think it was the first time that a show was shown pretty much totally in Spanish on primetime, and television, in the U.S. So, we've been doing kind of things that are different. So, we are continuing in that and that route, in this line of the plot. And I do believe it's important, and I feel good about the fact that we are adding to the discussion publicly, in the sense, you know -- the purpose of the show is to bring diversion to people you know, to divert. But I think also like in music, art can be utilized to explain things and to make people aware of situations that perhaps they're not seeing very clearly, or that they have not considered before. So, I feel very good about the fact that AMC will agree to tackle these type of subject matter that is really not touched in other in other shows.

Danay Garcia: You know, when we got the episode, I knew we had like an arc, Rubén and I at the beginning of the season, but I didn't know what was the content, and when we got the script, and I understood really the dimension and the fact that it was all in Spanish… I have to say, you know, from someone that is not from this country, and you know, working on an American show that is shown worldwide, you know, Rubén himself, I can say that we took it very seriously, in terms of translating the entire thing to you know, to Spanish and to make sure that it was truthful to the characters and truthful to the stories, we spent a lot of hours to really find the nuances of you know, in another language and that we are both very comfortable. Like is this how Daniel talks? Is this how Luciana talks? Because we hardly speak Spanish on the show. So, it's not like, you know, we have the characters perfectly set. And also the relationship that we're forming, is this how these two people communicate? And you know, it's a huge opportunity that we hardly have and we're extremely grateful and honored to be able to contribute to that and to our communities and you know, to everybody, like you said… to feel included and the show has so many eyeballs all over the world it was just such a great moment and space to bring the best of you know, us really to the table. And we really didn't take it lightly. We really didn't it was really, a wonderful experience.

Colby Hollman: I think what we're doing on the show, especially with this episode, you talked about dealing with mental health issues is very, very special in the way that like usually when I see mental health dealt with in different programming, you see characters that are mentally ill, grappling with their mental health… but like… that's kind of like part a part of them. And it's been a part of them for their whole lives. You know, like this person has BPD or this person has like chronic depression or da-da-da and like the Joker for example. Like you see this guy, he obviously has been mentally ill like he's been dealing with it his whole life. But Daniel, we've seen this guy be very capable, probably the most capable out of anybody that we've seen in the show and then this late onset mental health issue comes to him in old age and how that materializes, you know, how he navigates the disintegration of his mind and his mental state. And I think that's a very cool thing for us to, you know, be able to see, like from the audience perspective.

Rubén Blades: And there's one last thing I mean, which I think I always was very happy about. The fact that the, the older you get doesn't mean that the useless you get, all of a sudden Daniel is older than anybody, but he still has his wits about to take a knife away from a guy. To figure out sending them to the wrong place, to knowing that there's no bullets, I think he knew that that gun had no bullets. Because of its weight alone, but he did it anyway, you know, it felt like “I'm gonna kill you.” So, he knows a lot. And he acts, he's not like one of these people that that just sits down and wilts, you know, he's older, but he still has his skills. And usually, the stereotype of the older person is useless person. So, I'm very happy about that as well.

John Betancourt: Now we all know that Walking Dead Universe fans are as passionate as they come, and what happens in this episode will undoubtedly be polarizing to the fanbase. What do you hope fans take away from the tough decisions every single character made here?

Danay Garcia: It's gonna be intense. I'm getting ready for the tweets and the whole deal and, you know, gifs, and all that. I think our fans are used to being surprised a little bit. But I think this is a big surprise. I was surprised! I remember Rubén and I, we read it and we were pretty frickin’ surprised! So, if we're super nice, it's like this is going to translate to what's coming. I hope everybody understands that nobody's perfect. We make our mistakes, even Luciana makes mistakes. We are capable of lying and justifying things and we're just trying to survive and to grow. And in the middle of this whole thing, we try to connect, you know, we’re really telling you a story about the living, not the dad and the living… we are complex. We’re different and we’re difficult and you know, we're dealing with different cultures, you know, you're seeing an entire episode almost in Spanish and, and how these two people navigate that, and then that crazy world, so I hope they still love us.

Rubén Blades: I think in the case of Salazar, I think that people will understand that you do what you need to do in order to survive. And that means that the notion that there's good and there's bad people, it's going to be determined by the consequences of their actions, not by the actions themselves. You can do something that would seem immoral, that produces positive consequences. Which is what's happening once the whole society… rules change, everything went down. So, there's a new way to get the things and Salazar is part of that too. Salazar lied, he will connive, he will plot he will do whatever needs to be done in order to get ahead. So, I think the audiences should, should be by now, pretty much understanding that this is what's going to happen, the thing that’s gonna probably create emotion is the fact that many people love Daniel. And they're gonna feel like: “Oh my God, you know, why did you lie to Daniel?”

Danay Garcia: Oh my God. Yes.

Rubén Blades: She had to! In order to get it done.

Danay Garcia: Totally.

Rubén Blades: That's what he needed in order to be motivated. It's the moment that Ofelia is mentioned. That's when he is focused, all his strengths going to organizing in one direction so I think at the end people will get that and understand why Luciana did that.

Colby Hollman: I really, really hope that fans watch this, and they remember this moment for the rest of the season. And they just, you know, they have some kind of compassion for Wes. And like knowing that, he's in pain! This man… this man is in a dark place.

Rubén Blades: Absolutely.

Colby Hollman: And so, what ensues after, it's all coming from him being lost and being in that dark place and, and not knowing what to do. And I really do hope people have a lot of love for Wes, you know, moving forward, and we’ll just kind of see how that how that plays out.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.