Jessica Camacho has always had an inclination towards justice. She even considered a career in law before becoming an actress. She enjoyed the idea of fighting for what is just, something larger than herself. That makes her new roles, as LA County Public Defender Emily Lopez in CBS‘s All Rise and Police Officer ‘Pirate Jenny’ in HBO‘s Watchmen, particularly compelling.
Both shows ask compelling questions about the criminal justice system, and about the responsibility each person has to do what is right–whether or not that thing is backed up by the law. Camacho herself holds strong convictions, though she doesn’t see those convictions as political. “There are things that I just know are right,” she tells me, “that is like the pursuit of freedom, the pursuit of fairness. We all want to be treated with respect. To have a shot at a life and providing for ourselves, for our family. We all want to be free from violence. That, to me, is the hard line.”
Downtown: What excited you about All Rise?
Jessica Camacho: I get to play this incredible human being who is committed to justice in a very clear and true way. I got to really understand and explore what it is to be a public defender. That particular line of work is so heavy and burdened by the knowledge that so many lives are reliant upon the public defender as their last line of defense. The clients often have nothing and are in situations that are so dire. They are trusting in this human being to help them have a shot at the rest of their lives. I get to play somebody who is committed to something so much greater than themselves. I was very honored.
DT: Did you have an interest in the legal system before this role?
JC: Before I became an actor, before I even knew that acting would be a part of my life, I thought about going into law. It’s something that always interested me. It fascinated me: fighting on the right side of things, fighting for something bigger than yourself. I was always moved by that.
The problem was that I could never decide if I wanted to be a prosecutor or a defense attorney. I was not very good at making decisions, so I’m like, I might not be the best lawyer. I see the gray a lot of times. I’m not a person that is more apt to see things in black and white. So it was just like, “I don’t know if this is the right pursuit for me.” And then pretty soon after that, I discovered acting.
Jessica Camacho
DT: Were there any issues in All Rise that were particularly close to you?
JC: I think the thing that’s closest to me in my personal life is Emily’s struggle with relationships. But also I know that the topics that we explore in All Rise–as a human being, as an American–a lot of those really resonate with me, hit home with me. So I often find myself being really, really stirred emotionally by the things that we’re exploring on the show.
DT: Did you read Watchmen or seen the movie before you, uh, audition to be part of Watchman?
JC: I had seen the movie. As I was auditioning, I started to read through the original graphic novel and I was blown away. It was dark and it was stirring and it was uncomfortable. It was talking about real fears and real anxieties, and the paranoia and the darkness within us.
So that’s when I kinda realized like, “Oh, this is special, this is really special. This is like a different kind of look at life through the lens of the comic filter. This is something different.” So, yeah, it was very exciting.
DT: In addition to Watchmen, you were also on The Flash. Why do you think superhero shows are so popular right now?
JC: (Superheroes) speak to the possibility, the potential within us. I think as human beings, we feel limited in our lives. We feel the separation between how we want to see ourselves and how we actually see ourselves. I think the fascination with superheroes, it kind of picks up where our limitations leave us and there’s something beautiful and there’s something freeing about that.
But I think in terms of Watchman, I think this is the perfect time for Watchman because, with the constant stream of news and updates that technology brings us, we’re blown away by how much war, darkness, fighting, racism, and fear there is in the world. I think we want even our fantasies, even our heroes, to reflect what we’re experiencing as human beings.
I think people now want to see real. Yes, (Watchmen is) dealing with fantasy and yes, it’s dealing with heroes. Yes, it’s dealing with masks, but why the masks? What are the masks hiding? What are they disguising? I just think we’re just ready to delve in, even in our fantasy, to the darker nature of what is behind all of this.
When you see Watchman it’s like, Oh shit, this is not shying away from ugliness. This is not shying away from the horrible parts of American history. This is actually digging straight into that. Like, let’s address it so we can stop hating. Let’s address this. Then we can stop pretending that this is not at the core of us right now because we need to heal from it. And wounds need air to heal. I think it’s actually a really positive and beautiful thing that we’re starting to present things that are of the darker nature of us because I think it means that we want to heal.
Jessica Camacho
DM: What’s next?
JC: Right now, we just found out that uh, all rise is getting a full season, so we’ll be shooting until about March. I think we’re just all kind of like, “Cool, all right, let’s buckle down. Let’s make this, let’s combine our efforts and make a really beautiful piece of work.” So that’s what’s on my agenda. I’m excited to see what comes next. I’m bubbling over with passion and energy. I love what I do. I am so, so excited to show up for it, to show up for every project that I get to do, and I’m just excited to see what comes next.
Emergence is a new ABC show about a mysterious young girl. It’s also a supernatural sci-fi mystery thriller. Police officer Jo Evans (Allison Tolman) finds her at the site of a plane crash, untouched and unharmed. The girl, Piper, has no memory and no known identity, but she seems drawn to Evans. Plots thicken when a suspicious couple tries to claim the girl, who appears to have hidden powers. Who is she? What is her secret? That’s Emergence.
That’s also Alexa Swinton, the young actress who plays Piper. I mean, we know where she came from and–to my knowledge–isn’t being pursued by shadowy organizations. But, for a child, she seems to have hidden powers. In addition to acting, she’s a singer and a writer. Her first album is due to come out in January 2020, though you can hear her sing online. She’s also working on a book with her mom, “The Life of Skylie.” When she’s not doing that, she’s coding original computer games. At least one of those has gotten several thousand views.
Photo via IMDB
Swinton has been acting in film, television, and theater since the age of 1. Her first tv role was on the show Mythos in 2012. Before Emergence, her biggest credit was for her role in Billions as the daughter of the Attorney General of New York. She’s “uber excited” about her new role. “I can’t contain my feelings,” she tells Downtown, “(Piper is) totally a main character. I mean, she’s on the poster.”
Acting must be in the Swinton blood. Yes, she’s distantly related to Tilda Swinton, but her mother, Inna Swinton, is also an actor. So are her siblings, Maxim and Ava. The three kids have their own website, a collection of performances and accolades for the trio marking them as “Three Creators and Performers.”
Alexa Swinton is one of the youngest actors on the set of Emergence, but she’s having no trouble keeping up. She’s a big sci-fi and mystery fan and loves every aspect of playing Piper. “It’s always fun to play a really smart character,” she tells Downtown. “It’s so so cool that she doesn’t remember her past.”
Check out Alexa Swinton and the rest of the cast of Emergence, ABC’s new supernatural sci-fi mystery thriller, tonight at 10 pm/9c.
Actress Laura Gómez talks about her career, what’s next, and the art of bringing OITNB’s Blanca Flores to life for seven seasons.
For seven years, Laura Gómez transformed herself into the character of Blanca Flores on the hit show Orange Is the New Black. Blanca began the show as (so it appeared) a satanic bogart haunting the only stall in the prison with a working lock. Through Gómez’s empathetic performance, we watched as Blanca revealed the beautiful and tragic love story buried beneath her first impressions. A story finally concluded at the end of OITNB’s seventh season.
Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black may have introduced many viewers to Gómez, but it was far from the start of her career. She began acting in her native Dominican Republic, though she went to school for advertising. At 21, she moved to NYC to pursue acting as a career. She found a home with the Spanish Repertory Theater, participating in award-winning plays. From there, she branching out into television and movie work, as well as voiceovers. Fans may have seen her in the movie Exposed, opposite Keanu Reeves, in her recurring role in as Selena Cruz in Law & Order: SVU, or on HBO’s limited series Show Me A Hero.
1. How do you feel about how the show left Blanca at the end of season 7? Very satisfied to be honest. Blanca’s storyline in season 7 was very difficult to inhabit and to watch, because it’s such a close depiction of today’s sad reality in the United States. I believe it was somewhat necessary to give the audience some sort of comfort and relief at the end of a very hard season, and Blanca and Diablo’s unconventional love story provided precisely that.
2. What do you think (or hope) will happen to Blanca after the show ends? I hope she and Diablo live happily ever after.
3. How does it feel to leave Blanca Flores behind? I loved playing this character and her evolution on the show, but acting is one of those professions where you get used to things ending and new chapters beginning, whether it’s a play, at the show, or a movie. We actually had a pretty long run and I feel very grateful for it, but I’m also ready to move on onto a new horizon.
4. What have you learned during your seven years on the set of OITNB? I’ve learned a lot more than I already knew about our broken prison system. OITNB is a show that educated us all about difficult topics, bringing important conversations to the table. On season 7, we are exposing harsh realities about immigration and detention centers, and even though I’m well informed about the subject, there were new things I learned through Blanca and new character Karla’s stories. Plus, working with such amazing cast and writers, I definitely grew as an actor,
5. Was it a coincidence that Blanca was from Santo Domingo, or was that written in to match your life? It was described like that from the get-go. I brought my all to the audition and got the part that happened to fit me like a glove.
6. What is an important issue that you believe OITNB covered well during its run? Oh well, pretty much all of it, from the privatization of prisons to white privilege to Black Lives Matter to transgender issues (remember the beautiful backstory of Sophia -Laverne Cox’ character- on Season 1?) to opioids epidemic to the whole immigration issue around ICE on season 7. Not to mention the fact that it is a show created by a woman with a strong female presence all around. Meaning, it covered that in terms of a male-dominated industry.
7. What is an important issue that you wish OITNB addressed more, or better? I think we did pretty good overall, all things considered.
8. What is next for you? I just came back from shooting a film back in the Dominican Republic called Sunshine which will hit the festival circuit sometime next year, and right now I’m in the complex process of auditioning for new things. Not something that I can control, so in the meantime, I’m very focused on developing two screenplays -short and feature film- both based on plays that I wrote, which I also plan to direct.
Li Jun Li, who will play Jenny Wah in Netflix's Wu Assassins. Photo credit Storm Santos.
Downtown chats with actress Li Jun Li of Wu Assassins about her career, her love of martial arts, and growing up as a Chinese American immigrant.
Li Jun Li will be playing Jenny Wah on Netflix’s Wu Assassins. Photo credit: Storm Santos
Li Jun Li’s voice is bright and friendly on the phone. Li Li, as her friends call her, is celebrating: the electronic ad for her new show Wu Assassins has just gone up in Time Square. She plays Jenny Wah, a businesswoman who is left to run her parents’ restaurant and take care of her brother. The show is set to come out on August 8th, an auspicious date in Chinese culture, and she’s enjoying the anticipation.
Dan Metz: Could you explain why the date of Wu Assassins’ release is so important?
Li Li: Eight, in Chinese is Ba, and it rhymes with Fa, which means to make a fortune, prosperity, and success. So if you ever see anyone with a phone number full of 8’s or a license plate with a lot of 8’s, chances are they’re Chinese.
DM: Huh. I didn’t know that.
LL: Yeah! Learn something new, you know?
DM: I just finished watching The Exorcist season 2. I was gonna just watch a couple of episodes but I ended up watching the entire season. I was crushed about it getting canceled in the merger.
LL: Oh, thank you. Not a lot of people even knew about it, but it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I loved it so much. Wasn’t John Cho great?
DM: Yes! I was just about to ask: how was acting next to John Cho?
LL: Really great. We got along really well and it was so fun. I’ve been really fortunate with that cast as well as Wu Assassins, that we all really became so incredibly close. We made friends and family for life. He’s wonderful to work with. So it was a really good experience.
DM: Tell me a little bit about your character Jenny Wah. Who is she?
LL: She is a young businesswoman with a BA who had her own dreams but had to put them on the back burner when her parents all-of-the-sudden decided to move back to Hong Kong and left her with the family restaurant. In doing so, she ruined some relationships with some of the other characters in the show, and she definitely carries a lot of burden of expectations from her parents of what it means to be a good Chinese daughter, what it means to be a loyal daughter to your parents’ wishes. As well as taking care of her drug-addicted brother.
DM: Do you relate to her story?
Li Jun Li, who will play Jenny Wah in Netflix’s Wu Assassins. Photo credit Storm Santos.
LL: Absolutely. I’m first generation. I’m an immigrant. I moved to NY when I was 9 years old. I go through things every day that a lot of my friends who are not Asian American probably won’t understand. Wu Assassins explores similar themes, of being an Asian American living in a western country.
DM: Tell me about some of those experiences.
LL: Sure. Just normal cultural practices. As simple as taking your shoes off when you get into the house. A lot of people don’t do that. It always baffles us because you’re carrying the New York City filth into your apartment if you don’t take your shoes off.
Then there is fighting for the check at a restaurant. Some people will never understand how far we’ll go. Sometimes we see our relatives physical with each other in order to get the check for dinner. Nothing too violent, don’t worry.
With Chinese culture, we are raised by our parents up until we are independent enough, and we have our own jobs, and then the role reverses, and we then take care of our parents. We don’t see it as a debt, obviously. It’s love. It’s family. It’s something that isn’t practiced often in the western world.
DM: You have taken on a lot of diverse roles. You were a social worker in The Exorcist; you are a businesswoman and restaurant owner in Wu Assassins; you played an FBI agent. How much research did you have to do for these kinds of roles?
LL: Different roles, different research. When I was playing a cop on Chicago PD, we did some ridealongs. We trained with retired cops. We trained with guns that I think a lot of people wouldn’t be as comfortable with. It was actually really intimidating because we were given really intense situations to be in. For the FBI roles, it was obstacle courses, boxing gyms. Social worker, I just did some research on the internet.
This role is the closest to something that I can relate to. It’s one of the network’s first original stories, so we were given the freedom to really explore at our own pace.
DM: Tell me about being part of a Netflix original series.
LL: It’s definitely something that I’ve always wanted to do. Something physical. I like being physically challenged. I like martial arts. I’m not obsessed with it, but I always knew that it was a direction I would eventually take happily. So when I learned about Iko Uwais being cast in it, it made it that much more exciting because his… I don’t know if you’ve watched his movies The Raid 1 and 2.
LL: Oh my god. It’s incredible. It just changes the…it’s a whole different genre. So as soon as I found out about it, it made it that much more exciting that I got to be in this show.
DM: Tell me about training for this very physical role.
Wu Assassins comes out on Netflix August 8th, 2019. Photo from IMDB.com
LL: It was so funny because a lot of shows, you hear actors and actresses saying, “Oh yeah, I had two to three months to train for it.” I was one of the last people to be cast for the show and I found out and I flew out in the next two days. I flew into Vancouver, I had my fitting, and after my fitting I went right into the studio to where I met the stunt team and they taught me my first fight.
I had never been so sore. I didn’t even get to warm up properly and that was completely my fault. I was so caught up and so excited that I went right into it. The next day, I have never been so sore in my life. I couldn’t even breathe in and out without everything hurting. It was awful.
We also had a very tight schedule, so we would learn the fight a couple of days before we would shoot it and then we would do it. The thing is, most of the cast, they’re actually real martial artists, so it makes it much easier for them to learn how to film on such a tight schedule.
DM: Did you have a chance to learn from some of the other cast members who were established martial artists?
LL: Not in a way that we were able to take our time and give each other lessons, but Lewis Tan who is in our cast, has become such a close and dear friend of mine. I always go to him for advice. If I’m posing for a photo, I’m always like “Lewis, is this okay? Is it at the right angle?” I just want to make sure I don’t disrespect the art or look stupid.
DM: What is next for you? If you can share.
LL: I’m not allowed to share, but it’s very exciting. And it’s a comedy. And it’s with someone that I very much admire, and have admired for a long time. So, yeah. That’s all I can say about it. And it doesn’t take place in present time. That’s it.
DM: Well that sounds really really exciting.
LL: Definitely different than anything I’ve done in my entire resume.
DM: What would you like to do in the future?
LL: I definitely want to continue to pursue this direction: action. I really do love it. I’m training on my own. I mean, granted I’ll never be as advanced as a martial artist like Iko and my fellow castmates who have been training since they were kids.
DM: What do you want viewers to take away from Wu Assassins?
LL: I just really want people to enjoy it. It’s a really exciting show. It’s important that, on top of the martial arts that are going to be amazing, we were able to achieve it without sacrificing a good story.
Daisy Eagan is a talented actress who has been featured in many shows and stage productions over the last two decades. You know and love her as Joey Riverton in Freeform’s hit series, ‘Good Trouble,’ and her Tony-award winning performance as Mary Lennox in ‘The Secret Garden’ on Broadway.
Eagan was born on November 4, 1979 and raised in Brooklyn. Her parents bought a house in Park Slope in 1980 for about $30,000, and she absolutely loved it. She grew up in a working-class, liberal household in which her mother wrote about women’s health, and her dad was a carpenter/artist.
Early on, Eagan’s mother ingrained in her and her sister an understanding of and compassion for the struggles of the working class and the working poor. The two grew up going to pro-choice and pro-union rallies.
Photos provided by Daisy Eagan
Our Downtown team has the incredible opportunity to sit down and ask Eagan a few questions about herself and her career.
Downtown: Being a child actor and finding success at such a young age, how does that impact you in your relationship with yourself, but also pursuing out a career into adulthood?
Daisy Eagan: The answer to this question could fill a book. Having been a successful child actor is one of the biggest puzzle pieces of my life. I came of age at the top of my profession. It ended up being a big mind twister. I was too young to understand that success is not a straight line and that just because I was successful then didn’t mean I would always be. And it came so easily to me as a kid that I think it took me longer than most to learn a work ethic and discipline. I think for anyone to handle success properly they need to have a solid foundation. And at 11, I didn’t have that foundation. I’m so grateful for my early success, but it took me a long time to retrain myself and get over the inevitable resentment that came with less success as I got older. It took me a long time to get over myself and to learn to work hard.
DT: You play Joey Riverton, a radio talk show host, on the show ‘Good Trouble,’ could you describe your character to me?
DE: Joey is a complex person. Mostly Joey’s role is to help Alice figure out who she is and navigate the early days of being an out queer person. Joey has clearly done a lot of work on female-themselves. Learning about boundaries and how to communicate. We don’t know too much about Joey, yet. I have a fantasy that they’re a good cook. And I think ultimately, they want to be a record producer. I imagine they spend a lot of their free time at record shops and going to shows.
I think Alice and Joey’s relationship so far has been a really honest portrayal of two young queer people trying to figure it out. I think in all relationships, but especially in queer relationships, there’s a lot of insecurity because of our society’s treatment of LGBTQI+ people. Queer relationships, I think, are inherently harder because both people are living in a world that largely rejects them. So, there’s a ton of armor and unhealthy (but usually necessary) defenses that can go up. It takes a lot of work and patience to make a queer relationship really work. I think, so far, Joey and Alice are doing a good job. Little fires erupt and they put them out quickly. So far, anyway…
DT: After learning a bit about this character, I found out that you’re an LGBTQ+ character and recently came out as non-binary in this recent season. What was it like to take on this role and be another representation for LGBTQ+ individuals on television?
DE: I feel like I’m a small part of an important revolution. Like, in the history books, I’ll be listed as one of the first actors to play a non-binary character on television. Representation matters. Exposing people to diversity helps to normalize it. The more we see that non-binary people are just normal people, the more accepted non-binary people will become. To be a part of that cultural movement is thrilling. And I take it seriously. I try to be as thoughtful as possible, not just with my portrayal of Joey, but also with how I talk about gender in my own life, on social media, and with my son. Joey happens to be a female-bodied, androgynous presenting person. Not all non-binary people look like Joey. So, on my social media, I try to highlight all the different kinds of gender presentation there are.
DT: Do you find yourself in the character you play on the screen or has this character helped you discover things about yourself in your own personal life?
DE: I was already questioning my gender when I got cast as Joey. I had been writing about it on my blog. I knew I was queer when I was 12 years old. I “came out” on social media as Bi in 2009. But I spent most of my professional life being told I looked too gay. So, I worked very hard to femme myself up. And I felt tremendously uncomfortable. I felt like I was in drag. Looking back, it makes sense that I had trouble booking work. I was going into auditions feeling like an imposter. If you can’t be yourself authentically, how can you fully take on other roles?
Last July, I finished a theater gig and I said, fuck it, and cut my hair short again. I was tired of trying to fit someone else’s idea of who I was. I’m almost 40. I don’t have time for that shit anymore, you know? People told me that cutting my hair would get me typecast. And I had been so scared of that possibility for so long, but then I was like, wait, you mean type-cast as my actual type? What’s the problem? And I think a piece of me just felt like, if I didn’t get jobs because of my hair, or my gender presentation, then those weren’t jobs I wanted.
Less than a month after cutting my hair, I
booked Joey. Less than a month. The creators/producers of “Good Trouble”
have made it clear from day one that they want me in this role. They’re
not interested in making me something else. It’s one of the reasons I love this
job so much. Joanna, Bradley, and Peter walk the walk. They clearly believe in
the stories they’re telling. They’re not trying to sell something to some “new”
demographic. They’re like, let’s tell stories about real people. I walk on to
that set and I can’t believe my luck (and my therapist would want me to add:
“and my hard work.”).
But getting back to the show’s impact on me. Joey seems to be slightly more sure of who they are than I am. Bless them. I’m still figuring it out. For now, I identify as a non-binary female. There isn’t some integral part of my being that feels female or male. I don’t identify with the traditional definition of “female,” nor do I subscribe to the gender norms. That said, all of those things are cultural, not biological. So, I don’t feel like I’m rejecting a biological thing in my body, so much as I’m rejecting a cultural definition of who I am supposed to be because of my genitalia. I guess it feels more political than personal. But, as they say, the personal is political.
DT: Switching off of television and onto the stage, you’re about to perform at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland and be a part of the new play, “Sleeping Giant.” Could you talk about those shows?
DE: I always recommend switching off the television once in a while. I’m going to The Fringe Festival with two productions. One is 30 Minute Musicals Roulette. We take classic movies and turn them into 30 minute musicals. We’re preparing “Top Gun” (I play Maverick), “Die Hard” (terrorist and Deputy Chief of Police, Dwayne T. Robinson), and “Jurassic Park” (John Hammond and The Goat). Each night the audience votes on which one they want to see. It is complete silliness and one of my absolute favorite things I’ve ever been a part of.
The other play is “Sleeping Giant.” It’s a dark comedy about a giant, ancient beast that gets awoken in a small lake town. It’s a metaphor.
DT: You’re also quite the writer, with having penned op-eds in numerous publications and even operating your own blog. What sparked your interest in writing and have you ever wanted to dabble into screenwriting or playwriting?
DE: I don’t know that I can point to any one thing that sparked my interest. Back in the days of MySpace I had a friendly competition with my ex where we would write a blog and see who could get the most viewers (I usually won. If he says otherwise, he’s a liar. A LIAR, I TELL YOU!). And I realized I had a voice and some things to say.
I wrote a piece about finding out I was pregnant at 10 ½ weeks that people responded really well to. Then I wrote a piece while I was pregnant about what it was like to be uninsured and pregnant (this was before the ACA), and I got a bit of attention for it and won a BlogHer Voices of the Year award for it. I wrote about my abortion before #ShoutYourAbortion was a thing. And I wrote an open letter to a theater critic about rape culture, in which I discussed my own experiences before the #MeToo movement started. So, I decided to start taking my writing a little more seriously.
Currently, I’m in preproduction for a short film I wrote. So far, the script has been made an official selection of six festivals and has won three best short screenplay awards. I also have a completed pilot and am working on another pilot. Because I’m an actor in L.A. and we are all required by law to have a pilot.
DT: Lastly, is there any advice you can give to aspiring actors, especially as it relates to child actors?
DE: My best piece of advice is to have fun. If you find that what you’re doing is not bring you joy, it’s time to look for a new line of work. Remember that fame and fortune are fleeting unless you’re Beyonce or George Clooney. Enjoy the process. Remember that everyone on the set or backstage is working just as hard as you are and that most of them have more to do than you (always be kind to your P.A.s and stage managers…). Be who you are. Don’t let ANYONE tell you that who you are isn’t exactly enough. You will waste too many years trying to be someone you aren’t. And parents, don’t put your children in show business. DT
From debuting as a web series with its first two episodes uploaded to YouTube back in 2012, Eastsiders has grown into an Emmy-nominated show with a cult following and three darkly twisted yet hilarious seasons with more to come.
Eastsiders is an LGBTQ+, dark comedy series created by Kit Williamson that follows the turbulent and endearing relationship between Thom (Van Hansis) and Cal (Williams) as they grapple with issues from infidelity and trust to roadblocks in their respective careers as a writer and a photographer. The show also branches out to explore the relationships of their Silver Lake, Los Angeles friends, including Kathy (Constance Wu) and her boyfriend Ian (John Halbach) celebrating their six-month anniversary, making it Kathy’s longest relationship but Ian’s shortest and Quincy (Stephen Guarino), a gay club promoter, and Douglas (William Belli), a drag queen, sparking up a dynamic relationship.
This upcoming season will mark the final installment of the series and have the characters confront the hidden truths within their relationships, from answering questions on how love and commitment manifest into a long-term relationship, to examining the challenges of marriage.
Last week, Downtown Magazine attended a special screening for the new season and had the opportunity to sit down and chat with a few members of the cast, discussing the progression of the show since season one and the success found in crowdfunding the entire series.
Downtown: What do you hope your fans and viewers are going to get out of this season?
Kit Williamson: “For me, I hope that people enjoy a fully realized arc. I hope that they feel that every character’s journey is completed. One of the many reasons that this is the final season is that I believe good stories have endings, and I want to leave all of the characters in a not necessarily a happy place, but in the right place for the journey that we’ve seen them go on for the last seven years.”
John Halbach: “I’m so grateful for everyone for following along with us since 2012. And I hope that we can give everyone who’s been so loyal and amazing and supportive, a good, satisfying conclusion for these characters that I love as much as I hope that they do too.”
Van Hansis: “And I also just want to say that like Eastsiders has always been an ensemble show. And the last season, we went on a deep dive into certain relationships. And this one is so much more about, like, Who are these people as a community? And showing so many different types of relationships. It’s a love letter to the show.”
KW: “It’s a love letter to the characters.”
Downtown: “How is the Season 4 storyline and the way you’re ending the series compare and contrast with how you began the storyline originally in Season 1?”
KW: “The characters have grown up a lot over the last seven years, from being just complete and total methods to sort of having their shit together. But just because you have your shit together in your life doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have your shit together in your relationships. And it’s important to depict that, that relationships are hard, no matter what stage of life that you’re in.”
JH: “The ensemble has grown so much. In the beginning, there were five main characters, you know, there’s what 20 main characters now. *laughs* It’s a much bigger, broader world with different stories and different representations and different relationships. It’s really cool patchwork quilt.”
VH: “Yeah, but there’s also a total through line from who these people were in Season 1 to who they are now. Even if like, we haven’t seen some of them for a couple seasons, like coming back into where their lives are now is really exciting. And it’s also exciting to see that like, everybody is different. Jeremy (Matthew McKelligon) is in a place that I never thought he would be in and seeing somebody like him occupy that space is really exciting.”
Downtown: “How have you seen your show fit into this bigger picture of telling queer people’s stories in more nuanced and complex ways?”
KW: “I think being an independently produced series affords us the freedom to tell stories that are a little bit off the beaten path and to represent characters that don’t necessarily fit into an easily understood box. And when you get into depictions of LGBTQ+ characters on network television, especially, they tend to be flattened, one-sided, and often fall into the tropes of respectability politics, with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence in the suburbs, because they’re trying to make these characters palatable to as many people as possible. But the humanity of these characters is just as valid as the humanity of these kinds of characters that I’m talking about. And we need all kinds of representation, we need representation of LGBTQ+ characters that are flawed and complez, and we need to allow them to fuck up their lives and relationships. Because there is catharsis in that. There is validity in that kind of storytelling as well. We need to represent the full spectrum of the human experience, because that’s what we are as LGBTQ+ people, we are every kind of person, we just happen to be LGBTQ+.”
VH: “I would say one thing that’s really amazing about Eastsiders is that our bottom line is so low, because we’re not an expensive show, we’re a very cheap show. We don’t have a lot of money to work with, with that we get to tell our story in a way that I think that if there’s a ton of money behind it, there’s a bottom line that’s higher. And I think that’s why we outlasted shows from fancy networks, because we haven’t taken much to tell the story. And therefore, the risk is less. So for somebody like that, to be behind us, we get to play a little bit more. Which, you know, it sucks that we don’t have the money that we would love to have. But I guess the flip side of that is that because we don’t have money, we get to play.”
JH: “There’s only been a handful of cases really in the history of television. I think that something really special about ours is that you get to see Thom and Cal in a loving, long-term committed open relationship over seven years and I don’t think I can think of another show where you’ve seen that. There’s been a lot of like wacky three-some episodes or it happens once in a thrown-off way.”
VH: *mocking voice* “What did we do?”
JH: “I remember like David and Keith had a three-some on Six Feet Under but it was just one episode.”
KW: “I put a nod to that in Season 2 actually with the coffee scene.”
JH: “So I think that’s something that stands out about Eastsiders.”
Downtown: “How have how have the characters you play on the screen affect your interpersonal relationships in real life?”
KW: “I think everybody assumes that the show is completely autobiographical, which is hilarious because it’s never autobiographical in the ways that people assume it is and often autobiographical in the ways that nobody assumes. Thom and Cal are not Kit and John, but obviously, as this visible gay couple making this gay show people kind of assume that it’s just our life story put on the screen.I don’t know. How has it impacted your life, darling?”
JH: “I don’t know if it has because my character is so close to me. I mean, it’s written for me by my husband so I don’t know that it has. Except in that I love the cast and I love the crew. And we’ve created a family making the show together. So in that way, it certainly has. But I don’t know if it has affected the way that I behaved as a person in the world.”
VH: “I think as far as my character, we actually talked about this, Kit has put a lot of himself into Thom as well. So it’s not like the Kit and John relationship. Like, Tom is the writer. Kit’s a writer, Kit’s the creator. Kit always has a million things in the fire and that’s one of my favorite things about him. But as far as my personal life, I don’t know, I guess the only thing I can think of is I’ve made some friends that I think I’ll have for life, I hope I have for life., You know, being a part of the show and if they share some of their lives with me, based on how they write for me, that’s an honor.”
Downtown: “You’ve had so much success with crowdfunding the entire series of your show, why do you think your show was so successful in doing so? And do you recommend that more shows should be crowdfunded, esp. as it relates to telling more queer narratives?”
KW: “I really recommend crowdfunding for any content creator, but I think that you need to come to the table having produced something independently and self-financed something first, so that you can provide a proof of concept. You’re not just asking for handouts, you’re asking to continue something that you’re already doing. I believe in crowdfunding, especially for projects like ours that are on unlikely to get greenlit by a traditional studio or network. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m continuing my own crowdfunding journey on Patreon. I’m extremely inspired by people like Amanda Palmer who has over 10,000 patrons on Patreon. Willam has over 4,000. You see, these creators who are creating unconventional work get embraced by the crowd because I think that we have a thirst and hunger as an audience, especially as a queer audience, for unique stories. And mainstream media is not known for its uniqueness. They’re known for getting on the bandwagon well after ideas have taken hold in the public consciousness. So for people who try to be on the avante garde, for people who try to innovate and create new ideas and put new ideas out there and really stick their neck out as storytellers, crowdfunding is an amazing place to be. And I am so grateful to have forged, meaningful and lifelong friendships and relationships with people who I met because they were supporters of my work. Like Jen and Jeff Sarabock, who are here today who began as crowdfunding contributors in Season 1 and are now executive producers on the third and fourth season of the show. And now we’ve become close friends. So it’s amazing to just open up your work, your life. You open yourself up to the goodwill of the internet, amazing things can happen.”
Downtown: “Lastly, do you have any advice for any aspiring screenwriters, actors, and anyone wanting to be in the industry to do what you’ve done? Especially as it relates to creatives in New York City?”
JH: “Yeah, I would say to just make something and get it out there. We meet people all the time who say they want to make a show and then wait. You’ve tried to sell it to HBO and try to sell it to Netflix and sit on it. If you can sell it to HBO or Netflix, great and let’s celebrate you. But I think that you’re probably more likely to find success in sharing your story if you just get out there and share it yourself. I mean, I’m so glad that we ended up on Netflix, but we would have not ended up on Netflix if we hadn’t started out on YouTube. And it has been a journey. So I would recommend that, make it and get it out there.”
KW: “Yeah, almost no one sells their first project HBO or Netflix. Almost no one comes out of the gate with the first idea they’ve ever had, the first thing they put pen to paper becoming a televison show. You’ve got to just create and that begets more creation, more success. And I’d say as it pertains to people in New York City, in particular, New York is actually very independent film friendly, very guerilla filmmaking friendly. We have an episode in season three that we shot almost entirely in New York or primarily in New York. And if you’re shooting on a skeleton crew, you don’t actually have to get permits to shoot and a lot of places in New York, you can go out there with a camera operator and a sound mixer and you can make some beautiful art because you have some incredible, timeless, unique places to shoot in New York City. So just get out there and fucking do it. You have no excuse. Your project can look like a Woody Allen film. Not that I’m endorsing Woody Allen. Though, Annie Hall was an important movie for me, I’m not currently endorsing Woody Allen. But I am saying that you can get out there and make things and take advantage of the artistic community in New York City because it’s it’s incredibly vibrant and unlike any other place.”
Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are available for streaming on Netflix right now. Make sure to catch up with the series before the fourth and final season premieres this summer!
