Sophie Wilde’s work in Talk to Me is the epitome of a “breakout performance.” Not only did the film go from Sundance darling to one of the biggest smash hits of 2023, but Wilde herself received the praise she deserved for an incredibly demanding and exceptionally well executed lead performance.

In fact, Wilde’s work as Mia is one of the main reasons why Talk to Me is so much more than a cool horror movie with a super creative high concept. Yes, the A24 acquisition delivers big when it comes to the thrill of watching a group of naive teenagers willingly becoming possessed via the now-iconic hand, but much of the movie’s depth comes from how Mia’s grief makes her susceptible to losing herself in the midst of this sinister high.

In addition to being showered with critical praise and winning Best Lead Actress in Film at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, Wilde just scored one of the most coveted honors for a newcomer in this industry. She was nominated for the BAFTA’s EE Rising Star Award alongside Phoebe Dynevor, Ayo Edebiri, Jacob Elordi, and Mia McKenna-Bruce. Win or lose, the nomination alone is a significant achievement, one that often signals a long, illustrious career to come.

In celebration of that nomination, Wilde joined me for an episode of Collider Ladies Night to revisit some of her early steps in the industry and to recap her journey with Talk to Me.

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Kathryn Newton is taking over in the best possible way. At 27, not only has she already amassed a vast filmography, but it’s one that’s packed with variety and bold creative swings. She headlined a Paranormal Activity film, she’s part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she was a comedy ace in Blockers, she stars opposite acting icons in HBO’s acclaimed series Big Little Lies, and she’s a certified horror genre powerhouse thanks to Freaky, Radio Silence’s next movie Abigail, and Zelda Williams’ wonderfully dark and charming feature directorial debut, Lisa Frankenstein.

Newton leads as the title character, a misunderstood teenager who feels alone in the world after her mother is axe-murdered in their living room. Lisa’s step-sister Taffy, played by the effervescent Liza Soberano, is always there to offer support, but the only one who can fill Lisa’s heart is a guy who died in 1837 (Cole Sprouse). One night, Lisa’s fantasy becomes a reality when a lightning bolt reanimates his corpse, kicking off a joyfully horrific adventure to help him regain his humanity — and his missing body parts.

With Lisa Frankenstein now in theaters nationwide, Newton took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to revisit her journey thus far, including the pivotal moments that helped her tackle this delightfully bonkers monster movie with confidence.

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One of the greatest joys at a film festival is meeting an artist for the first time and knowing with certainty that, from that point on, you’ll always prioritize their work. I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of those encounters over the years, but two especially memorable ones are Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre. I first met Harrison Jr. at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival for Luce, and for Pierre it was at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival for Brother, both breathtaking performances in exceptional films. In addition to the fact that both are bursting at the seams with talent, Harrison Jr. and Pierre are also artists who clearly ooze with deep passion and respect for the craft of acting. They're consistently true treats to chat with, so when the opportunity to host the very first 2-on-1 version of Collider Forces with the pair popped up, it was a must.

While in Park City for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Harrison Jr. and Pierre kicked off their promotional tour for Nat Geo's Genius: MLK/X. Season 4 of the award-winning anthology series stars Harrison Jr. as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pierre as Malcolm X, delving into “their complex lives as husbands, fathers, brothers and sons.” By focusing on the moments between game-changing historical events, Genius: MLK/X offers an intimate look at how the icons questioned their resolve and decisions.

During their Collider Forces chat at the Collider interview studio at Sundance brought to you by Film.io, Harrison Jr. and Pierre revisited pivotal moments from their journeys in Hollywood thus far, highlighting some key crossover and shared experiences, but also emphasizing that every path in the industry is different.

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Reneé Rapp is one of the most exciting and inspiring forces on the rise right now in entertainment. Not only is she bubbling over with next level talent, but she also boasts a number of extremely admirable qualities, ones that can be hard for any artist to establish, let alone one just starting her career. Rapp operates with maximum conviction. She’s someone who knows what she wants, and has absolutely no problem advocating for herself. Even better? She keeps her collaborators’ best interest in mind while pursuing her own dreams.

Rapp is often in the spotlight courtesy of her flourishing music career and highly influential social media presence, but her name is in even more headlines than usual right now thanks to her feature film debut, Mean Girls. After playing Regina George on Broadway, Rapp returns to the role for the new Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. directed film. Mean Girls 2024 holds tight to the 2004 original, incorporates a slew of songs from the musical, and manages to put its own fun, fresh spin on the narrative.

In case you need the basics, Mean Girls follows homeschooled Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) after she moves back to the US from Kenya. Cady’s got absolutely no clue how to navigate the high school social scene, but fortunately, Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) swoop in to give Cady the lay of the land at North Shore High School, most importantly, a warning about The Plastics led by queen bee, Regina George (Rapp). Trouble is, the appeal of popularity proves too powerful. While on a secret mission to expose Regina as a “mean girl,” Cady starts to lose herself in the thrill of being at the top of the food chain and becomes a “mean girl” herself.

With Mean Girls now playing in theaters nationwide, I got the chance to have a Collider Ladies Night chat with Rapp to discuss her journey with the Mean Girls franchise and where she gets her unflappable confidence.

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Carla Gugino has been quietly amassing one of the most diverse bodies of work in Hollywood, and it’s about time that’s recognized. She’s got a disaster movie in San Andreas, loads of family-friendly adventure films including Race to Witch Mountain, Night at the Museum, and the Spy Kids movies, and she’s currently soaring in the horror space with projects like Gerald’s Game and The Haunting of Hill House. We’d be here all day if I listed everything, but do give her lengthy filmography a quick scan. I’d be willing to bet that in almost all cases, consecutive projects fall in different genres.

Just recently, Gugino got the opportunity to show off a good deal of her seemingly limitless range in a single project, The Fall of the House of Usher. The stellar new Netflix series from Mike Flanagan and the “Flanafamily” focuses on Roderick and Madeline Usher, the extremely wealthy and powerful brother-sister duo pushing Fortunato Pharmaceuticals up and up while leaving a trail of dark secrets in their wake. They think they are untouchable, but when their heirs start dying one by one, they're forced to revisit past choices and reckon with Gugino’s character, Verna, or rather, “The Raven.”

While Verna is often seen in human form, she’s not. As Gugino has explained in the past, “She’s not the devil. She’s not even evil.” She added, “You could say she’s the executor of fate or the executor of karma.” Just before their death, each Usher sees a manifestation of Verna, and each version is different. It’s a one-of-a-kind challenge and Gugino absolutely soars while tackling it, so much so that she was just honored with a Critics Choice Nomination for Best Actress in a Limited Series.

In honor of that accolade, the success of The Fall of the House of Usher, and everything Gugino’s accomplished in film and television thus far, she joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation and offered up a closer look at how she did what many strive to do in Hollywood — avoid being “boxed in” and build a career with a wealth of unique creative opportunities.

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During our Collider Ladies Night interview, Maura Tierney emphasized that the role of Doris in The Iron Claw “was not an easy role,” which is plain to see in the finished product for a multitude of reasons. Not only is the new A24 film based on a staggeringly tragic true story, but, as a supporting actor in the movie, Tierney is also in a position where she must justify a number of a significant choices her character makes within a high-pressure family dynamic with minimal screen time. She does just that in the movie, delivering a performance that’s brimming with effective subtlety and subtext.

The Iron Claw is inspired by the true story of the Von Erich family. They’re Texas professional wrestling royalty with their sights set on rising even higher in the sport, a goal that’s dashed by a string of deeply gut-wrenching personal tragedies.

With The Iron Claw now playing in theaters nationwide, Tierney took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to revisit her journey from early unforgettable credits including NewsRadio and ER to joining the cast of one of A24’s most anticipated releases of the year.

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We started the Pre-Party branch of Collider Ladies Night for artists like Aria Mia Loberti. The show is designed to highlight newer filmmakers who are undeniable stars and are bound to soar in this industry while changing it for the better both in front of and behind the lens. That is Loberti.

Loberti is in the midst of celebrating her first professional acting role ever, a performance that earned her a Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. She leads the Netflix limited series All the Light We Cannot See as Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French teenager who flees German-occupied Paris with her father (Mark Ruffalo) to live with her uncle (Hugh Laurie) in St. Malo where he transmits secret radio broadcasts as part of the resistance. When her father fails to return home, Marie continues the broadcasts herself, transmissions that continue to be highly valuable to the resistance and also serve as opportunities for Marie to try to reconnect with her father.

In celebration of her work in All the Light We Cannot See, Loberti joined me for a Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party conversation to explain how she scored the role of a lifetime and how the series has given her an incredibly strong foundation as she moves forward with her wildly promising career in Hollywood. 

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Kate Siegel is a Collider Ladies Night favorite for a multitude of reasons. Just to name a few, she’s wildly talented, does exceptionally thoughtful and detailed backstory work, and she values the opportunity to build a filmmaking community and lift others up through it. She’s been doing all of that for years now, but as the Flanafamily grows and as her individual star rises higher and higher, there is no doubt she’ll become an even stronger force in boosting high-quality, bold storytelling made by good, talented people.

The most recent example of Siegel being a key part of such a production is The Fall of the House of Usher. Created by Mike Flanagan and directed by Flanagan and Michael Fimognari, the series focuses on the Fortunato Pharmaceuticals empire run by siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher (Bruce Greenwood and Mary McDonnell). Having always operated as though the Usher family is untouchable, Roderick and Madeline are shocked when their empire starts to crumble as the members of the Usher dynasty are killed off one by one.

With The Fall of the House of Usher available to watch on Netflix and beginning its awards season run, racking up three acting nominations at the Critics Choice Awards, Siegel was kind enough to take the time to return to Collider Ladies Night and offer up additional insight into her journey in Hollywood thus far. 

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It’s not easy to steer clear of getting boxed in to one particular thing in Hollywood, but Shelley Hennig has done that especially well, amassing a body of work that ranges from a soap opera to horror to extreme action-comedy with her brand new Netflix series Obliterated.

The show comes from Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and stars Hennig as Ava Winters, a CIA operative in the midst of a very tense and dangerous mission to track down a nuclear threat in Las Vegas. When she finally manages to lead her team to victory, they encourage her to treat herself and enjoy some Las Vegas debauchery. She reluctantly agrees and out they go, indulging in a hefty dose of sex, drugs, and alcohol. With a wide variety of substances coursing through them, they get a call from their superior. The bomb they deactivated was a fake, and they have to get right back to work. And so they do — extremely drunk and/or high.

With Obliterated now available to stream on Netflix, Hennig joined me for a Collider Ladies Night chat to revisit her journey from becoming Miss Teen USA to headlining a hit Netflix show.

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Back in April I was watching Dexter Fletcher’s Ghosted. The majority of the movie focuses on Chris Evans and Ana de Armas’ characters, Cole and Sadie, but at the beginning of the film, there’s a delightful short sequence that unfolds at Cole’s family home. That sequence includes some pitch-perfect interactions between Evans and the actor playing his sister — someone I was unfamiliar with at the time.

About four months later, I began my Gen V journey and was instantly taken by the entire cast, but especially by the actor playing Emma. Who was it? It was the same artist. It’s Lizze Broadway.

Broadway shoulders one of the most complex storylines in The Boys spin-off series. Emma is a supe with the ability to get small, but in order to do so, she must purge to shrink to the size of an ant and then eat to grow tall again. Constant body image monitoring and pressure from her own mother leaves Emma with a warped perception of the value of her powers and feeling “unlovable, gross and ugly.” However, Broadway makes it abundantly clear that Emma is bubbling over with heart, strength and immense potential, and while the character doesn’t get to live happily ever after at the end of Season 1 of Gen V, she certainly has begun a journey of finding and embracing self-worth, and understanding how she influences others for the better.

There were a number of shows I was eager to circle back to via Collider Ladies Night when SAG-AFTRA reached a tentative deal with the AMPTP. One was Gen V, and while I’d love to chat with every member of this wildly talented ensemble in the future, Broadway was at the top of the list. An actor who truly burst onto the scene with natural screen presence, an infectious energy, and the ability to make the most of every ounce of her range as an actor, crushing Emma’s mic drop one-liners and commanding the screen in one of Gen V’s most emotionally devastating scenes.

It was an honor to have Broadway on Collider Ladies Night (her first interview ever!) to learn more about her journey to Hollywood and how she wound up delivering a scene-stealing performance in the hit Prime Video show.

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