This year we had the pleasure of hosting two Collider Ladies Night panels at San Diego Comic-Con. The first leaned heavily into the horror genre by putting the spotlight on Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Alexandra Shipp, Katie Douglas, Hassie Harrison and their upcoming IFC and Shudder titles. Then, the next night, I had the great honor of taking the stage with Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Danielle Pinnock and Marissa Bode to celebrate Peacemaker, The Bad Guys 2, Ghosts and Wicked.

Every edition of Collider Ladies Night demands a significant amount of prep work, including these live versions of the show. But, ultimately, the success of a Ladies Night interview comes down to the guests, and with this group, we truly hit the jackpot. Bode, Pinnock, Holland and Brooks all took the stage with a sky-high passion for their current projects, a deep respect for what it took to hit this point in their careers, and an eagerness to celebrate one another.

During the panel, Holland recalled first moving to Hollywood as a teenager and her ongoing journey of finding a sense of belonging, Pinnock looked back at her time “scamming” and the day she found out she booked her first series regular role, Brooks discussed why her time at Juilliard teed her up for great success in the superhero genre, and Bode discussed making her feature debut with one of the biggest hits of 2024, Wicked.

After that, all four took a moment to look forward to all the good on the horizon - specifically Peacemaker Season 2, Ghosts Season 5 and Wicked: For Good.

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Chase Sui Wonders has already proven herself a scene-stealing force via titles like Generation and Bodies Bodies Bodies, but 2025 is solidifying her as an undeniable star. In March, she debuted The Studio, an Apple TV+ series in which she stars opposite powerhouses Seth Rogen, Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz and Kathryn Hahn. Mere days after that show scored a whopping 23 Emmy nominations, Wonders headlines one of the most anticipated movies of the year - the new I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Similar to the 1997 original, on July 4, Wonders’ Ava and her group of friends go for a drive and stop on the side of the road to watch the fireworks. When one walks into the road, an approaching car swerves to avoid hitting him and veers off the edge of the cliff. Rather than report the incident, the group attempts to sweep it under the rug. And they’re confident they’ve done it until they all regroup next year and come to learn that they’re being hunted by a killer who claims, “I know what you did last summer.”

With I Know What You Did Last Summer now playing in theaters nationwide, Wonders joined me for a Collider Ladies Night chat to retrace her steps to the film. She looks back on her time studying at Harvard and how booking the role of Riley on HBO Max’s Generation wound up being a career game-changer. She also discusses her directing ambitions and what she took from watching Rogen wear multiple hats on the set of The Studio, and then breaks down all the biggest moments of I Know What You Did Last Summer, including sharing scenes with franchise icons Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., and the movie’s third act twists.

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If you frequent Collider Ladies Night, you’re well aware that I’m a big proponent of filmmaking families — frequent collaborators who stick together and also add new additions to the family every step of the way. Mike Flanagan’s “Flanafamily” is a big one, and it’s a topic that keeps popping up with Molly Gordon, who’s recently found great success collaborating with close friends on films like Theater Camp and Oh, Hi. Yet another top-tier filmmaking family? The one James Gunn started and continues to thrive with, and that family has a member you’re going to be seeing a whole of in the coming weeks, months and years. It’s Mikaela Hoover.

In celebration of the release of Superman, in which Hoover plays Daily Planet gossip columnist Cat Grant, she took the time to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio and recap her journey to joining three of the biggest franchises of all time - DC, Marvel and, most recently, One Piece. It’s a list of accomplishments that certainly can be traced back to Hoover’s natural talent, but as we often discuss on Ladies Night, in film and television, finding someone who sees you and what you’re capable of can be essential. Hoover found that in Gunn.

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You don’t get a bigger breakout opportunity than a show like The Pitt. Taylor Dearden’s already made a big impression in the gone-too-soon MTV series Sweet/Vicious and the second season of American Vandal, but The Pitt just sent her star soaring in a wholly different way.

The Pitt is undeniably (and deservedly) one of the most celebrated new shows of the year and Dearden’s performance has proven to be an especially big standout among an ensemble full of aces. She plays Dr. Mel King, a second-year resident about to begin her very first day at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital's emergency room, aka, The Pitt. While there are nerves at the start of the shift, Mel’s an extremely skilled doctor who excels under pressure and also has the emotional capacity to connect with patients in ways others can’t.

With the show on the cusp of what could be an extremely successful Emmy season, Dearden carved out some time on a day off from filming Season 2 to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio and run through her experience playing Mel and adapting to The Pitt’s one-of-a-kind filming schedule. We also took the time to zero in on a few key scenes from Season 1, one of which has become an especially beloved fan-favorite — the “Savage” scene.

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As though starring in a new Jurassic World movie isn’t a big enough deal, Luna Blaise also boasts an especially exciting franchise achievement. She’s right smack in the middle of one of the most iconic set pieces from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel, a set piece that was famously cut from Steven Spielberg’s original film.

In Jurassic World Rebirth, Blaise plays Teresa Delgado. Just before starting her first year at college, Teresa takes a boat trip with her father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), her little sister (Audrina Miranda), and her boyfriend (David Iacono). Little do they know, they’re sailing through Mosasaurs territory. Fortunately, Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett and her team swoop in to save them, but the Mosasaurs sets its sights on their boat instead and the entire group winds up stranded on Ile Saint-Hubert, an island that InGen once used to run a secret R&D facility.

While trying to make their way to a rumored village on the island, Teresa and her family are left with no choice but to steal an inflatable raft right out from under a sleeping T-Rex’s nose and ride it down river to get them closer to this supposed safe haven.

With Jurassic World Rebirth now playing in theaters nationwide, Blaise joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to revisit her journey to the franchise, a journey that included two hit TV shows - Fresh Off the Boat and Manifest. She also recapped her Jurassic World audition, revealed her character’s backstory, explained why she thinks of Garcia-Rulfo and Iacono as family, and, of course, walked me through exactly what it was like to film that river raft scene.

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Allison Williams’ filmography is loaded with variety, but it’s also packed with examples of how one project can influence another — even if they’re in entirely different genres. There’s the hit HBO comedy-drama series Girls, which first sent Williams’ star skyrocketing. As that show wound down, Williams headlined a feature film for the very first time, Jordan Peele’s Academy Award-winning horror movie Get Out. Williams continued to enjoy great success in the genre, but wound up exploring an entirely different corner of it with the horror-comedy M3GAN. Now, M3GAN 2.0 let’s her do just that yet again as the horror-comedy concept becomes a horror-comedy-action film.

M3GAN 2.0 picks up about two years after the events of the original film. Since Gemma’s (Williams) A.I. creation went on a murderous rampage, she’s put her focus on advocating for government oversight of artificial intelligence. However, when Gemma discovers that the M3gan tech wasn’t entirely destroyed and was used to create a military-grade weapon called Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), she’s left with no choice but to resurrect and team up with M3gan to stop Amelia from growing too far beyond the control of her human creators.

With M3GAN 2.0 now playing in theaters nationwide, Williams joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to retrace her journey in film and television thus far, and to dig into how her craft in front of and behind the lens has evolved.

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Katie Douglas is in the midst of a banner year. She just headlined Eli Craig’s adaptation of the Adam Cesar novel, Clown in a Cornfield, and the slasher movie broke records when it hit theaters. The movie scored IFC Entertainment Group its biggest opening weekend ever. A mere month later, Douglas had another title that posted huge numbers. Upon release, Ginny & Georgia Season 3 became the most-watched TV title on Netflix with a whopping 17.6 million views. In celebration of all that success, Douglas visited the Collider Ladies Night studio to revisit how she paved her way to Clown in a Cornfield and Ginny & Georgia, and to dig especially deep into the hit Netflix series’ third season, which includes quite a few game-changing moments for her character, Abby.

In Ginny & Georgia Season 3, Brianne Howey’s Georgia is trying to avoid becoming a convicted “Mayoress Murderess.” While Abby stands firmly by Ginny’s (Antonia Gentry) side as she powers through her mom’s trial, Abby must navigate a multitude of personal challenges of her own, challenges that undoubtedly will reshape her priorities and who she is moving forward.

During our conversation, Douglas mentioned using journaling to tackle her work as an actor, so I opted to ask how her journaling as Abby has evolved from Season 1 to Season 3. As Douglas explained, in Season 1, she had a “teenage edge to her.” Douglas continued, “It was very surface-level. She was kind of catty and loved her friends, but in a way that it’s easier for her to tease than to be affectionate.” In Season 3, however, her journaling is far more fleshed out because “she's aware that she needs help.” Douglas credits Abby’s very first experience going on a romantic journey with making feelings a bit easier for her. “I was trying to exercise what that would feel like for somebody who has only ever used intimacy in a way that is performative, or kind of a form of self-harm, just what that would look like on paper and the slow burn and the build-up of coming to terms with the fact that you're learning how to love and you're learning who you love, and you are only a teenager.”

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[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of We Were Liars, "My Friends Are Lying in the Sun.”]

After an epic run playing Caroline Forbes on The Vampire Diaries, appearing in over 170 episodes, Candice King has a brand new series regular role. She’s playing Bess Sinclair in Prime Video’s adaptation of E. Lockhart’s hit young-adult novel, We Were Liars.

Emily Alyn Lind leads the series as Cadence Sinclair, a teenager who spends her summers on her grandfather’s (David Morse) private island with her family, including her mother, Penny (Caitlin Fitzgerald), and her two aunts, Carrie (Mamie Gummer) and King’s character, Bess. The Sinclair family is considered American royalty, but when a tragedy strikes on Beechwood Island, their legacy and lives are totally upended.

With We Were Liars now available to stream in full on Prime Video, King took the time to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio to revisit her journey to the show. She looked back on making the pivot from music to acting, finding confidence in her craft on the set of The Vampire Diaries, and making her way through Bess’ mighty complex storyline in Season 1 of We Were Liars.

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An actor is very fortunate to have a multi-season run on a series. An actor is even more fortunate to get to see a series through to its natural conclusion. Lauren Cohan went above and beyond that with her Walking Dead journey. Not only did she play Maggie in over 100 episodes of the main series, but then she got to go on to headline a spin-off series opposite Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and that spin-off series earned her her very first executive producing credit and now her very first directing credit as well. She’s a key component of one of the biggest television empires ever created, and she’s making the most of the opportunities that franchise affords her - opportunities she’s earned.

The Walking Dead: Dead City picks up a number of years after the events of the main series. When Hershel (Logan Kim) is kidnapped by the Croat (Željko Ivanek) and taken to Manhattan, Maggie must turn to Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for help. While Maggie does manage to make it off the island with Hershel, Negan is pressured to remain by The Dama (Lisa Emery). Season 2 kicks off about a year later with the New Babylon Federation conscripting the residents of The Bricks to head into Manhattan for an expeditionary mission tied to their agenda to ultimately retake it. Maggie agrees to go, but only if no one else from her community is forced to do the same. So back to Manhattan she goes, along with a stubborn Ginny (Mahina Napoleon) and a stowaway Hershel.

After powering through five episodes of Season 2 as an executive producer and playing Maggie trying to survive yet another perilous mission in the Big Apple, the time has some for Cohan to put on yet another hat. With the release of Season 2, Episode 6, “Bridge Partners Are Hard to Come by These Days,” she is officially a director. In celebration of the milestone achievement, Cohan joined me for a Collider Ladies Night conversation to discuss her early days on The Walking Dead, her experience advocating for herself when her initial series regular contract concluded, how she approached stepping into the executive producer role with Dead City, and how she felt about taking on an extremely ambitious episode for her very first venture as a director. 

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[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Ginny & Georgia.]

Brianne Howey’s had her hands quite full playing Georgia in Netflix’s smash hit Ginny & Georgia since day one, but things take an especially dark turn in Season 3, which involves a sharp tonal shift and even more dire circumstances for the characters to power through. When the series kicked off in 2021, Howey began tackling the challenge of playing a highly likable character who does bad things, but without undermining the severity of her crimes. Not only did she start off strong in that respect, but for three seasons now, she’s consistently backed Georgia’s most complex decisions with maximum humanity. While you may not agree with every choice the character makes, Howey ensures you always understand them and that Georgia has your heart every single step of the way.

Season 3 begins with Georgia behind bars after being arrested at her own wedding for the murder of Cynthia’s (Sabrina Grdevich) husband, Tom (Vincent Legault). While she is able to go home under house arrest for the duration of the trial, her existence is rocked in every respect. Confined to her home, her world becomes smaller than ever, the situation upends her relationship with Paul (Scott Porter), it puts Zion (Nathan Mitchell) in an especially tough position, Austin (Diesel La Torraca) will undoubtedly be changed forever, and Ginny’s forced to decide how far she’s really willing to go for her mother.

What does it look like when a devout mother sees her relationship with her children threatened? What does it look like when a confident conwoman is stripped of her power? What does it look like when someone who has successfully hidden gruesome secrets for years has them all exposed? That’s what I dug into with Howey on a new edition of Collider Ladies Night.

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