Acting Up

Cortney Wills weighs in on the 2021 Primetime Emmy nominations and highlights the 37 Black creators who nabbed nods including several Acting Up guests including Aunjanue Ellis, Courtney B. Vance, Amber Ruffin, O. T. Fagbenle, and more.

Cortney Wills sits down with multi-talented actor, director, and producer O. T. Fagbenle to discuss his work on  Hulu’s “The Handmaids Tale”, making it into the MCU for “Black Widow” and how he’s prepping to play Barack Obama in Showtime’s upcoming “The First Lady” and what went into creating “Maxxx”.

Cortney Wills sits down with Emmy-nominated actor William Jackson Harper to discuss his riveting portrayal of Royal In Barry Jenkins’ Underground Railroad and his upcoming role as the lead in the second season of HBO max series love life.

Anti trans bills to be stopped can be found at: https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/anti-transgender-legislation/

Representative phone numbers can be found at: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Sample Phone Message:

“Good afternoon, my name is Cortney Wills and I’m a member of the City Transgender Alliance. I am calling to urge my Senator to champion the opposition of the (INSERT ANTI TRANS BILL: Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act) to ensure that there are protections for transgender children. In our country, everyone should have the right to move fluidly across their gender identity without the fear of discrimination. Even if they are a sponsor of the bill, I hope that they will vote against it. Again, this is Cortney Wills. My address is 123 theGrio Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90123 and my telephone number is 987-654-3210. Thank you for your time.”

Black comedians are having a major moment in Hollywood and Cortney Wills sits down with two women who are killing the comedy game. Amber Ruffin dishes details about her groundbreaking show "The Amber Ruffin Show" and Yvonne Orji opens up about the end of "Insecure" and her new book "Bamboozled by Jesus".

The first Black woman to be cast on RHONY discusses her strategy for tackling issues of race on reality TV and how she’s handling micro and macro aggressions from her costars with such composure, being labeled “angry” and the ridiculousness that is Heather Thomson. She also dishes details about why she ended her engagement. Spoiler alert: it’s not what you think!

Cortney Wills sits down with “Big Mouth” writer, Brandon Kyle Goodman to discuss his latest project “The Latrell Show” and his ongoing work as an LGBTQ+ advocate as well as how conversations about acceptance have to start at home. Cortney also weighs in on the end of “POSE” as well as the groundbreaking new season of “Master of None” starring Naomi Ackie and Lena Waithe.

Cortney Wills sits down with Loren Hammonds, VP, Immersive Programming to discuss how Tribeca Film Festival is meeting the moment with the content they curated, a special Juneteenth lineup, and how they prepped for the star-studded, in-person event that will take over NYC from June 9th to June 20th.

Award-winning director Dawn Porter dishes on working with Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry on the new Apple+ series, “The Me You Don’t See” and discusses her upcoming NatGeo documentary, “Tulsa and the Red Summer.”

Cortney Wills sits down with Nicole Beharie, star of Amazon’s star-studded anthology series, ‘Solos’; discusses her beautiful performance in ‘Miss Juneteenth’ and gets real about navigating Hollywood as a Black woman.

Cortney Wills sits down with filmmaker Reggie Lochard to discuss how he battled deeply ingrained mental health stigmas to get the help he needed in real life and why he confronts Black America’s measures of masculinity in his latest project ‘A for Alpha’.