Angle on Producers with Carolina Groppa

Today we're serving you a special episode in collaboration with Latina Squad, the community of Latina executives launched by Christine Davila reshaping Hollywood.

Carolina sat down with three of her fellow squad members:

Julia Balleza (VP of Development and Programming, Blumhouse Television) Greta Fuentes (MACRO, where she started as Charles King's assistant the day he left WME to build the company), and Adriana Martínez Barrón (former Netflix exec, now running Stacey Abrams's production company Sage Works). We're also honored to feature Chika Igwilo, SVP of Development at FX, as our guest of honor.

Chika was awarded the Catalyst for Change award at the organization's second annual Creative Honors, recognizing her impact across two decades in the industry.

Together, we discuss the career-defining gambles they didn't see coming, what it actually means to advocate for a project no one else believes in yet, and what they hope the next generation inherits. I hope this convo fills your sails with wind!

MORE ON LATINA SQUAD www.latinasquad.com

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Adrien Rabago has spent 25 years dressing people in Los Angeles, from actresses on red carpets to brides finding "the dress" to two very famous soccer players who needed twelve jerseys instead of two, two days before the shoot.

She founded Adrien's Closet in 2009 to make elevated dressing accessible beyond celebrity circles, and in this conversation she pulls back the curtain on what styling actually looks like behind the glamour: the steaming, the pinning, the returns, the paperwork, and the constant last-minute fires that come with production work.

Carolina and Adrien actually go way back, one of those funny things that happens once you've been in LA for 20 years and your paths keep crossing. Carolina was thrilled to head into Adrien's Closet for her Tribeca looks, and Adrien even surprised her with an outfit for this very recording!

Experience the flowy fabulousness on YouTube!

Clothing can shape identity, confidence, and how we are perceived. It can absolutely change how you walk into a room. There's real research behind this, including the concept of "enclothed cognition," coined by Northwestern researchers in 2012, which explains how what we wear doesn't just signal something to the world, it actually changes how we think, perform, and feel about ourselves.

We also dig into the real difference between a stylist, a designer, and a costume designer, how wardrobe communicates trust or authority or struggle before an actor says a word, and why quiet luxury might really be a response to overwhelm. Adrien also opens up about dressing women through body changes, including postpartum, and what it means to help someone feel confident in a body they're still getting to know.

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CONNECT WITH ADRIEN https://www.adrienrabago.com/

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Sherry Thomas is one half of Bialy/Thomas & Associates, the casting powerhouse behind Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Walking Dead, The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, Barry, The Righteous Gemstones, Dead to Me, Apple TV+'s Sugar, and Broadway's Jersey Boys. She and Sharon have earned multiple Emmy nominations together across their 25-plus year partnership. Their most recent Emmy nom is for Apple TV+'s Pluribus, which is Vince Gilligan's follow-up to Breaking Bad.

It's a full-circle moment: Sherry and her partner Sharon Bialy are the team who first brought Bryan Cranston to Gilligan's attention nearly two decades ago.

In this episode, we go all the way back to New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where a girl obsessed with Donny and Marie and Three's Company had no idea she'd end up building an empire in casting. She landed in LA not knowing a single person. She slept on couches for two years. She worked retail at the Gap. And then, through a chain of small moments (a charity basketball game, a fundraiser, a woman named Victoria Burroughs) she found her way into a casting office and never looked back.

We dive into:

• Her first job as a location casting assistant on Contact
• Meeting her business partner Sharon Bialy at a Starbucks and building a 25-plus year partnership without ever putting anything in writing
• What she wishes every producer understood about working with casting directors
• Her honest, unfiltered take on AI in casting and what it means for actors
• How becoming a mom to two teenage daughters changed the way she sees ambition and grit

Sherry is candid, funny, and doesn't hold back, whether she's talking about the gritty early days or the future of our industry. This is a primer for building a career (and a business) on relationships, resilience, and staying true to who you are.

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QUESTIONS

❔Answering your questions on our Subtasck! Submit here:

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Keep creating, keep hustling. And as always, thanks for doing this life with me. — C.

Dana Ledoux Miller ​is a shape shifting scribe. ​

S​he was PA'ing on Lost and The Descendants when she first said out loud that she wanted to be a writer. A decade later, she's co-written and co-directed Moana 2 and written Disney's live-action Moana, in theaters July 10 — becoming one of the ​f​ew Pacific Islander writers steering a major Disney IP. In this episode, we trace ​h​er full arc: from set life in Hawaii, to landing in Aaron Sorkin's writers' room on The Newsroom, to the surreal call that brought her onto Moana.

We talk about what it actually feels like to carry the weight of representation on a project this big — the pressure of getting it right, the imposter syndrome that hasn't fully gone away even after a billion-dollar movie, and how she handles public reaction to work she's poured herself into.

We also get into PEAK, the nonprofit she co-founded so she's not the only name on the list of Pacific Islander storytellers working in Hollywood.

Plus: desert island essentials, her favorite Hawaiian island, and what The Rock is actually cooking.

AOP SUBSTACK

📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content

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AOP WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN

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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr

iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC

JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY

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QUESTIONS

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What does it take to hike 26 miles at 14,000 feet with no signal, no Uber, and two of the funniest people alive?

We're about to find out.

Join me as I sit down with comedy legends Bob Odenkirk and David Cross at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival to discuss their documentary Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu — a film about friendship, mortality, and what happens when Hollywood strips away and the mountain shows you who you actually are.

Plus:

• Why David chose Bob for this — and why Bob almost said no
• How Bob's heart attack during Better Call Saul gave the whole journey a different kind of weight
• The moment the mountain cracked them both open — and what they found on the other side

Special thanks to Greenslate, Theorem Media, and Portrait for making this panel happen! Greenslate has been a longtime partner of AOP and it never gets old talking about the ways they have revolutionized production payroll and accounting for independent film. They had 22 projects at Tribeca this year and Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu was the one we chose to spotlight, via their client Left/Right.

AOP SUBSTACK

📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content

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AOP WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@angleonproducers

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr

iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC

JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY

📸 Instagram: / https://instagram.com/carolinagroppa | https://instagram.com/angleonproducers

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👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: / bit.ly/2BqHs8L

QUESTIONS

❔Answering your questions on our Subtasck! Submit here:

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Colby Day is a breath of fresh air who refuses to be performative. In an industry that runs on heat and carefully curated perception, he just gives it to you straight. Day is an Emmy-nominated writer whose credits include the Netflix film "Spaceman" starring Adam Sandler and "In the Blink of an Eye," which premiered at Sundance this past year. He also served as a writer and story editor on Apple TV's For All Mankind season five.

He is also the creator of Hollyweird, a Substack where he documents the unglamorous reality of being a working writer in Hollywood with more honesty than almost anyone else in this business.

His directorial debut "The Comedy Hour "with Tim Heidecker and Tatiana Maslany is up next.

This was one of my favorite chats of the year so far. Colby and get super real about 10-year timelines, selling a show and watching it collapse, why transparency is a radical act in this industry, and what keeps us going when everything falls apart.

Tune in! xx CG

Post is where a movie becomes a movie. Where a TV show gets it's bells and whistles. The edit, the VFX, the color, the sound mix, the sound design, and everything in between. It's where everything comes together. And yet for years, California has had no standalone incentive to keep that work here.

In this episode I sit down with Marielle Abaunza, President of the California Post Alliance and EVP of Business Development at Signature Post, to talk about AB 2319, the proposed standalone post-production tax incentive that could be game changer in helping keep jobs in LA. We get into:

• How we took Hollywood for granted and where we go from here.
• How 1,800 post jobs have been lost since 2012 and what that actually means for working crew.
• What AB 2319 does and why the "shoot anywhere, finish in California" model is the shift the industry needs.
• How New York netted $47 million in state revenue from post credits in a single quarter

The people this bill protects are not Hollywood elites. They are editors and sound designers and post producers trying to log enough hours to qualify for health care. This is a movement. And there is not a lot of time.

Go to www.californiapostalliance.org to join, donate, or submit a letter of support for AB 2319. Legislators read those letters. Your story matters!

Angle on Producers spotlights the magic makers in Hollywood. Hosted by Emmy-nominated producer Carolina Groppa, the show goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the craft, challenges, and unfiltered truths behind one of Hollywood's most essential, and often misunderstood, roles.

AOP SUBSTACK 📫 Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content https://angleonproducers.substack.com/

David Boxerbaum built his career the hard way, with no connections, no shortcuts, and a relentless belief that great stories still change everything.

He first fell in love with making movies as a young kid growing up in the Bay Area, camera in hand, directing his friends before he even knew what an agent was. After attending New York University, he realized the there was real power in understanding the business behind making movies. So he mailed his resume across town, worked his way through some of the most iconic agencies in the business, and quietly became one of the most prolific spec script sellers in Hollywood. By 26, he was named one of The Hollywood Reporter's Next Generation 35 Under 35 — one of the youngest agents ever to earn that recognition. Today he's a partner at Verve, representing top writers, directors, and showrunners, and is widely credited with helping open the door for the short story market.

Join us as we get into what it actually means to believe in your clients, how he generates heat in a bidding war, and why he's optimistic about the future Hollywood.

AOP SUBSTACK

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QUESTIONS

❔Answering your questions on Tuesdays in our newsletter! Submit here:

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This is a recording of a members-only Substack Live I hosted two weeks ago. If you're a paid subscriber, this is exactly the kind of access and conversation you're signing up for!

Carolina Alvarez, writer-director and founder of Femme Regard, is the force behind Sync — a self-financed sci-fi feature now streaming on Amazon Prime that received SIX distribution offers. In this special chat, she breaks down what film school doesn't teach you:

• how she crowdfunded a feature in stages
• built a festival strategy around genre and community (not just prestige)
• reached out to 20+ distributors without a rep
• spotted the red flags in bad offers
• decoded the unsexy deliverables that can quietly blow your budget in post-production

This episode is for any filmmaker trying to figure out how to actually get your movie seen!

Subscribe to the AOP Substack for free to stay in the loop, or go paid to get access to members-only lives like this one, bonus content, and the full archive.

Links are in the show notes.

AOP SUBSTACK

Musings, Mixers, Workshops, and Exclusive Content

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6UBux9RgxeW1MiQDXSMrnr

iTunes: https://apple.co/3FDyhmC

JOIN THE AOP COMMUNITY

Instagram: / https://instagram.com/carolinagroppa | https://instagram.com/angleonproducers

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QUESTIONS

​Submit them in our on going AMA

https://tinyurl.com/5aprkzz6

In this solo episode, I get candid. I open up about losing my father in January, what grief looks like when you can't afford to stop moving, and the complicated truth about showing up anyway — to the meeting, to the festival, to the mic.

I also dig into eight listener questions from the year-end survey, covering: how I select guests, whether I'm still producing, how independent producers can find financing outside traditional models, tips for batching scenes on a micro-budget shoot, how to pitch yourself for freelance producing opportunities, where to actually network, how to work festivals like Sundance and SXSW, and how to define and achieve your goals in a season of uncertainty.

Raw, practical, and very real...

Thanks for doing this life thing with me!