Podcasts

In 2018, after years of occasional on-camera and radio commentary, I began hosting and producing podcasts for EW as part of my work to develop our digital audio programming.

EW On Set: In this exclusive weekly companion podcast for Schitt’s Creek‘s sixth and final season, Dan Levy and the rest of the Rose family and friends – Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Annie Murphy, and more – discuss the heightened emotions and most heartwarming moments behind the scenes of their show. Featuring cast interviews taped on location in pop-up podcast studios.

On location at the titular creek, outside Toronto, June 2019.

EW’s BINGE: Schitt’s Creek co-creator, showrunner and star Dan Levy takes a deep dive with us through each of the first five seasons of the sleeper hit comedy. With bonus episodes starring Annie Murphy (Alexis Rose) and Dustin Milligan (Ted Mullens). (Also available on YouTube.)

The Awardist interviews: Lorene Scafaria, director of Hustlers; Bong-Joon Ho, director of Parasite; Taron Egerton, star of Rocketman; Barry Jenkins, director of If Beale Street Could Talk; Adam McKay, director of Vice.

Other assorted interviews: Kathy Griffin, live at SXSW; Aidy Bryant on Hulu’s Shrill

‘The Americans’ Gets A Happy Ending — Kind Of

In ‘The Americans’ Series Finale, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys Finally Get Their Happy Ending — Kind Of | ETonline.com, May 2018

I almost never find—or make—the time to write for my own site, but after six seasons of being a die-hard fan of The Americans, I knew I needed to step up and pay tribute to the series’ spectacular swan song. (I’d also broken my usual rule to interview Holly Taylor back in 2016.)

Plot twist: No one dies. In its last and biggest surprise, The Americans stages a bloodless coup in its final hour. And yet it’s somehow more tragic and heartbreaking than if they had perished.

How I created Uncharted, the first-ever Twitter soap opera

Last month I sat down for a long overdue lunch with jaybushman during which I learned I may have been a little too quiet (STOP LAUGHING) about something cool I did, long ago in the pre-Ice Age of the internet. 

Jay and I were catching up and talking about Hashtag Hamlet, the cool new project he’s got going on. I mentioned in passing that back in 2007 I’d spent a couple of months running a crazy thing called Uncharted, which I believe was probably the world’s first Twitter-based soap opera, a tie-in project for Showtime’s The L Word and its web site, OurChart.com.

Uncharted was probably the only thing I’ve done in my life that can truly be classified as “ahead of its time.” It was before Jay made Lizzie Bennet Diaries, before transmedia, or at least before I’d ever heard that term.

I’d had a Twitter account since January 2007 and was quickly very obsessed with how well it could be used for all kinds of storytelling. So along with an awesome tech-savvy colleague I knew from PlanetOut, Beth Callaghan, we dreamed up this online soap opera idea, and somehow in the summer of 2007 I actually got paid real money via Viacom to tell the story 10 girls and 1 guy and all their lesbian drama, as performed on Twitter.

The actual story is largely lost, in part because at some point someone else managed to claim @uncharted, and mostly because I got busy and never properly archived anything. According to the Wayback Machine (and confirmed by a small stash of text files I found on an old hard drive), here’s the first blog post we made about the series, which is mostly about how Twitter works:

image

Plot twist: No one cared.

Here is the actual first (FIRST!!!!) comment:

image

And a pretty typical early response (about as enthusiastic as it got):

image

The month before we launched, only 50,000 people were signed up on Twitter. So even though we had a major media sponsor and got some great press, there really wasn’t any viral lift to be lifted. People barely knew what to do with their own Twitter accounts, let alone almost a dozen fake ones. After about a month, Showtime understandably pulled the plug, we rolled up the proverbial rug and moved on.

Except it turns out one awesome person I now know totally cared, because Jay flipped his shit when he found out Uncharted was my baby. “THAT WAS YOU?!” he asked, more than once, in what has to be one of the most flattering accidental reveals I’ve ever been a part of.

In honor of Twitter’s 8th anniversary, and as a thanks to Jay for unintentionally paying me such a huge compliment, here’s the leading lady’s first tweet:

image

While the main account—which IIRC was largely used to RT everyone and maybe occasionally act as the chorus?—is now gone, I went back and created a list with all the other still-surviving character accounts. I’ll try to throw these into Storify in chronological order when I get a chance, but in the meantime, I assume by now you all know you can start at the end and read up. (Note: I think we created the “direct@“ phrasing in order to expose private interactions.)

Thanks to everyone (and especially to E) who during that one summer when I worked about 12 jobs, including running a dozen Twitter accounts, helped me stay sane and came up with some of these names and character details and never once told me it was a terrible idea to try something so ridiculous.

Originally published March 20, 2014.