Latest news with #GregKinnear
Newsweek
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Greg Kinnear Was at a Career Crossroads—Then This Film Changed Everything
Actor Greg Kinnear. Actor Greg Kinnear. CJ Rivera/Apple TV+ "I usually have a terrible memory for so many things, but the experiences that I have making things is pretty visceral." Lately, Greg Kinnear is just trying to keep his head on straight due to his embarrassment of riches, from Smoke on Apple TV+ and the film Off the Grid. "You kind of have to shuffle around the bottom of your proverbial briefcase to pull up this old project. Smoke, we did it a year ago, Off the Grid, we did last year. So there's always a little bit of, 'Who the hell did I play?'" For the arson crime thriller Smoke, Kinnear teamed up with Taron Egerton and Dennis Lehane. "Very CGI light on this. It was real fire. When we were playing with it, we were playing with the real thing." And in Off the Grid, Kinnear is the bad guy chasing down Josh Duhamel through the woods. "You want to punch the bad guy in the face. And who better? When they look at my face, wanting to punch is pretty much a universal reaction." While that's not necessarily true, Kinnear is happy to be playing against type in both projects. "It's a great thing about what we do...[when] the people who create these ideas and come up when it's well done, and craft a world, and you're allowed into that world." SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARTING SHOT WITH H. ALAN SCOTT ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY AND WATCH ON YOUTUBE Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication. You know, one of the things that I respect about your career is that you started off as a personality on TV. You really were on that talk show host track, and then it shifted to acting. It was crazy. I mean, it was unusual, particularly at that time. It was kind of weird to go from the TV to film, now I feel like people do it all the time. You don't think about it. You see people in commercials, and they do everything. But it was a very kind of weird environment in terms of separation of church and state back then, and how the hell Sydney Pollack [director of Sabrina] allowed me to climb over the wall and do Sabrina, I don't know, but credit to him. I mean, that's Sydney Pollack and Harrison Ford. That's a nosedive into the film world. Lot of people would say belly flop, yeah. But [you] got to do it whatever way you got to do. So for a show like Smoke, when you're looking at a project like this, there's your character but there's also the story. What do you respond to first? Well, in the case of this, I think I responded first and foremost to the fact that a couple years ago, I worked with Dennis Lehane and Taron on Blackbird, which we did in COVID and it was kind of a crazy time. But Dennis cast that show so well. It was a wonderful group of people and actors. The team that he had, the support team of directors and producers, were all excellent. And his writing, both as a novelist and as a showrunner, really, I think kind of blossomed. He had done some other stuff, but I think Blackbird, really, set the stage for Dennis. So listen, loved to be along for that ride. And when he was mumbling the idea of maybe another show, there wasn't a long conversation. I said yes way before he did and looked forward to the opportunity of working with [him]. And then, in this case, he got Taron, you have a lot of the same producing, directing team came over. The world of arson is not something I necessarily would [be] fascinated by, [arson] probably wouldn't have been the ticket I would have pulled. But that's true all the time. It's the great thing about being an actor. It's a great thing about what we do is, that the people who create these ideas go and dig and dive so heavily onto a subject matter and come up when it's well done, and craft a world, and you're allowed into that world. And in this case, it's a pretty exotic world. I mean, you think of crime, even serial killers, I feel they've been in front of us to a point where they kind of just wash off us. You see one serial killer, you've seen them all. Not the case with Blackbird, but I'm saying in general that subject matter is used a lot, and then you think of fire and arson, and how strange and what a distance I think there is from any typical viewer to what happens in that world, how it exists. But sure enough, you give it to a guy like Dennis and his great writing team, and they really, I think, unlocked it in a way where I was excited to be a part of it. It's kind of different sort of role for me. And again, working with just great people. Greg Kinnear in "Smoke," now streaming on Apple TV+. Greg Kinnear in "Smoke," now streaming on Apple TV+. Apple TV+. The fire itself is also kind of like a monster or the villain. Yeah, I think you're right. Fire, strangely, it should be something made easily to create as the monster, but I don't think it is. Again, there's some sort of tax on the imagination that really forces, I think, the storytellers, in the case of Smoke, to make it visceral, make it real. There's, for the most part, very CGI light on this. It was real fire. When we were playing with it, we were playing with the real thing. And I think the intimacy and the immediacy of that really bleeds through on the show. You have a palpable experience with it in the show, and you feel it, I think, in a really effective way. But yeah, we got a lot of scary monsters in this show, whether they're fire or not. Between Smoke and Off the Grid, how do you keep track of your projects when they're released so close to each other? Well, you kind of have to shuffle around the bottom of your proverbial briefcase to pull up this old project. In the case of Smoke, we did it a year ago, Off the Grid, we did last year. These projects, they take a while before they ever come to life. So there's always a little bit of a process of saying, "Now, who the hell did I play? What am I doing?" That's just kind of the name of the game. And I usually have a terrible memory for so many things, but the experiences that I have making things is pretty visceral. What about Off the Grid appealed to you? I had met Josh before briefly, but I don't really know him. And he's like a 6'5" football linebacker, and when I heard the concept, they're like, "We're making this movie called Off the Grid, and Josh is the guy." I was like, "Oh, I understand that." So sure enough, Josh is a guy who has gone off the grid with a piece of technology, and the bad guys are trying to get it back, and I am playing one of the key bad guys who must do everything to get it back and doesn't particularly like the bayou or the woods where he is residing. What I find interesting about you is that, if I saw you in the grocery store, I wouldn't be nervous to say hello, you seem nice. So when you play bad or evil, it's a bit of a plot twist. Well, I have played some bad guys. And I just did—Disney's doing kind of a reimagining of Holes and played the Sigourney Weaver role of the warden, who's just this devilishly fun character. Off the Grid was, case in point, they sent it to me, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I never get to be the bad guy going after the guy." And I look at any of those movies that I've liked where you're the villain, and you're chasing the guy, and it just seemed like, "Okay, here we go. We're gonna put the bug repellent on and chase Josh, see where this goes." But it was fun to do. And in a weird way, it makes you want to see the bad guy get it more. Because if you wanna like him, and he gets to be as bad as he is, it just makes the justice so much more sweet. Yeah, you got it. You want to punch the bad guy in the face. And who better when they look at me, wanting to punch is pretty much a universal reaction. I don't know if that's true. Which I think is partly why it works, because we don't start off wanting to punch you, we want to like you. But then, yeah, you're bad. Yeah, I feel like, like I said, I don't get to do it very often, but when it's offered, it is fun to do. If I'm being honest, it does play against type a little bit. It's not necessarily a goal to want to kill or maim or hurt people, but you know, that's the great thing [about acting], that we get to do lots of stuff that we don't otherwise get to do. Where's the Great Western? I think Kevin Costner has that locked up. He's got the corner on that. Greg Kinnear (L), Jack Nicholson (C) and Helen Hunt (R) film As Good as it Gets. Greg Kinnear (L), Jack Nicholson (C) and Helen Hunt (R) film As Good as it Gets. Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Well, I can't spend time with you without bringing up As Good as It Gets. That film seems like it changed everything for you. From an Oscar nomination to just being able to work with that level of talent: James L. Brooks, Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt. We're coming up on nearly 30 years since it was released. Did that film change everything for you? Yeah, it's interesting. I had done Talk Soup. And I was doing a late night show. I had taken over for Bob Costas. And while I was there, I kind of went in, hat in hand, to Don Ohlmeyer, who ran the channel, and who was a pretty imposing tough guy historically in our business. And I kind of managed to ask, beg and plead to be able to do the first couple of movies that I was able to do. And I would come in and bank five shows, talk shows, in a day, and then go off and shoot a movie here or there. And As Good as It Gets came along, and Jim offered me the role. And I was really at a crossroads. I was like, "Well, it's going to be in L.A., it's a big role and a lot of time." And I was just suddenly faced with, wow, okay, so I've been on this trajectory of kind of a television host, interviewer, whatever. And the fork was there, to continue that, or I was going to really have to step over into acting. It really caused some soul searching. And I thank Jim so much because he handed me that role, which was an incredible, incredible role. And obviously the material is so amazing. It's got heart, and it's got laughs, and it's got something thoughtful to kind of meditate on and it's got Verdell the dog. So, I did have a lot of things there that allowed me to say, "Well, I'm going to give this a shot. Who knows where all of this goes." I ended up having to walk away from the talk show at NBC. That movie meant to me a great deal, because obviously it was successful, but you don't know that when you're making it. I mean, I knew I thought it was good, but I hadn't done enough movies at the time. Didn't know what we were doing was good. When I am [impersonating] Jack standing at a door going, "Don't bother me ever," and kind of just basically unloading a cannon into my face of Nicholson'isms, I was thinking, "All right, this is a life highlight." If this goes nowhere, but hopefully the audience will respond as well, and obviously they did. So it was a pivotal movie in a lot of ways, from that standpoint. Well, there's also another aspect to it that I found particularly interesting. It was part of an era of portrayals on film of gay characters who weren't tragic, who weren't dying. Simon was able to just be Simon. And that was a real shift in film from films of the '80s and '90s that, rightfully so, focused on portrayals of violence or HIV/AIDS. Did that stand out to you? It did. I read it and I thought, "Wow." I mean, first and foremost, the fact that Simon was gay was secondary to a racist, misogynist, really messed up guy [Jack Nicholson's Melvin] and his [Simon's] decency was right there in the page. And that's really, first and foremost, what I took note of and thought, "Wow, my gosh, this is so great." Because I know exactly what you mean. We had seen that role where we're going to get all sorts of yucks out of this guy. It's like a lever you can pull. The transition we're always going through in terms of big entertainment is so many things, they start as stereotypes, and then maybe they become just types, and then maybe they just become characters, and then they just become people. And I feel like, yes, that was happening at that time, but I felt, wow, what a leap forward with this script. What a lovely character that's been drawn up with Simon, and I just wanted him to find success and love and happiness like I do in every character. It really was just such a special film and performance and certainly meant a lot to me. Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. I'm so appreciative. And, gosh, I can't believe, it was Father's Day yesterday, and I showed my daughter, because it's like, the one day of the year I'm able to say, "Guys, I'm picking the movie." There's no conversation. It's not like we're gonna talk about it. I'm picking the movie. So I—and I don't know why, I guess because somebody was just telling me it's the 50-year anniversary, I didn't realize, but of [One Flew Over the] Cuckoo's Nest—and so we fired that up last night, and I hadn't seen it for years, and my kids had never seen it, and I was just like, "Oh my gosh, what a beautiful treasure of a film." I mean so much nuance and so many unspoken moments that are making people laugh in our little theater, which is our living room, but making my kids laugh that it wasn't even dialogue. Wasn't a joke. It was just so beautifully constructed. And funny enough, when I got As Good as It Gets, because my daughter asked me, "Oh, did you talk to Mr. Nicholson about that?" And I was like, "No, I refused to watch it because I was already so scared to meet this guy." The last thing I was going to do is go fawn over him, watch the movie and then show up and say, "Tell me about the scene where you and Chief were sinking baskets." I was way too over my head in that movie to begin with. But watching it now, I don't know, I'll have to hit him up with a couple new questions.
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
If You Enjoyed ‘Dept Q', Don't Sleep on New Prestige Crime Series ‘Smoke'
There's a lot of noise around the big blockbusters coming out right now – Fast cars! Dinosaurs! Jonathan Bailey's flip flops! – but while the cinemas are busy whipping themselves into a frenzy, a new prestige drama is quietly dropping onto television screens. As Netflix's recent Dept Q showed, a high-calibre, low-key crime thriller can scratch a different kind of itch, and if you've burned your way through that one, you're in luck: another superior offering is on its way. Smoke, which consists of nine hour-long episodes, isn't set in dreary old Britain/Scotland, but takes place in dreary young America, in an unspecified state. It does, however, star several British actors, including a chisel-jawed Taron Egerton in the lead, who also executively produces the series. Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, an amiable and ominously named firefighter turned arson investigator who is wrestling with memories of the traumatic conflagration that ended his former career. Dave is also getting flak (I stopped myself saying 'heat' – you're welcome) from his boss (an excellent Greg Kinnear) for failing to identify the two serial arsonists who are running rampant through the local area. One of them, 'The Divide and Conquer' arsonist, is setting off simultaneous fires in multiple public locations including supermarkets, so that the fire departments are stretched beyond capacity. The other, the 'Milkjug' guy, is burning down ordinary people's houses with cooking oil, though viewers are given more than a tip-off of who that might be with the introduction of downtrodden fry cook Freddy (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). Dave, however, is having minimal success tracking down either culprit – in fact, he seems rather distracted by his own literary ambitions, as he's got a schlocky fictionalised memoir on the go – and the situation is raging out of control. The corporation that owns the supermarkets isn't happy and is threatening to take action against the whole department; that, if not people's houses burning down, might be what's needed to light a firecracker up Dave's... (sorry but it's so hard!). What does Dave need? Why, a partner of course! And preferably one towards whom he can feel mild animosity, if not outright contempt. Enter Michelle Calderon (another conspicuous name, from the Spanish for 'cauldron'), played by the impressively self-contained Jurnee Smollett, a detective from a different police force who has been assigned to assist Dave for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Michelle has secrets, including a toxic affair with her former boss (another Brit, Rafe Spall) and some fire-related trauma from her earlier life. She's doing her best to block it out – mostly by exercise – but the past, as we know, doesn't like to stay buried. Of course these elements are all familiar, some might say hackneyed, tropes of the crime genre, but what elevates Smoke – which is based on the true-crime podcast Firebug – is the quality of its cast and, thanks to writer Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island), who created and wrote the series, its big-swinging script. 'Fire doesn't give a fuck about your wallet, or the size of your gun, or the size of your dick you wish was the size of your gun,' narrates Egerton, presumably quoting from the book Dave's writing in giant letters in his notepad (maybe it's not so bad after all!). It's punchy stuff. Smoke looks great too – all desaturated compositions of sickly grey-greens, with the striking billows of pale yellow when a fire is burning white-hot. And fire really is staggering beautiful, as much as it is terrifying and obliterating and all the other things that get writer-mode Dave so hot under the collar. It's certainly a change to have a drama that focuses on ash dispersal rather than blood spatter. (For a bit of bonus cred, the title track, over elegant sequences of smouldering pages, is performed by Radiohead's Thom Yorke.) That said, there are no dinosaurs, or F1 cars, or flip-flops. But Smoke does have tension, and great performances, and slow-burn simmer. Also, if you stick with it, the promise of some serious twists (and John Leguziamo!) to come. 'Smoke' is now streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday You Might Also Like The Best Men's Sunglasses For Summer '19 There's A Smartwatch For Every Sort Of Guy What You Should Buy For Your Groomsmen (And What They Really Want)
Forbes
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Josh Duhamel Says Living Off The Grid Prepped Him For New Tech Thriller
Josh Duhamel in "Off the Grid." Ransom Canyon star Josh Duhamel didn't have a rough time getting to know the set of his new film Off the Grid because the actor lives off the grid in real-life. Off the grid for Duhamel — a Minot, N.D. native — is the deep woods of Northern Minnesota, a state the acclaimed Transformers and Shotgun Wedding star and his family call their adopted home. Being in Minnesota also allows Duhamel to catch games of his pro sports favorites, including NFL's Minnesota Vikings and MLB's Minnesota Twins, each of which he's been cheering on for years. In return, Minnesota has embraced Duhamel, awarding him, for example, the 2024 North Star Award from the Twin Cities Film Fest, an honor reserved for actors who hail from the North Star state. Opening in select theaters and arriving on digital streaming via video on demand on Friday, Off the Grid is directed by Johnny Martin and written by Jim Agnew. In the film, Duhamel plays Guy, a brilliant scientist who is forced to go on the run after the unscrupulous company he is working for wants to use a groundbreaking mini cold fusion reactor for nefarious purposes. However, when company owner Belcor (Peter Stormare) and Guy's former mentor, Ranish (Greg Kinnear), locate Guy's whereabouts and send a strike team after him, the scientist has to spring into action. Using his technical wherewithal and survival skills of living off the grid, guy takes on his adversaries in ways they won't see coming. Josh Duhamel Is Unplugged But Locked And Loaded In 'Off The Grid' One benefit that Josh Duhamel didn't exactly expect was that living off the grid in Minnesota would come in quite handy while filming Off the Grid the movie. 'That's one of the reasons why I wanted to do it,' Duhamel said in a recent Zoom conversation, fittingly, from his home in the Northern Minnesota woods. 'I just felt really connected to this idea that Guy was forced to do this because he took his invention of cold fusion technology, which was intended to be free energy to the world, but the government wanted to weaponize it.' As such, Duhamel put his real-life experience of living a simple life far away from the rat race to good use. Thanks to a great tax rebate, Duhamel and director Johnny Martin found their ideal off the grid shooting location in Mississippi. 'Guy had to [embrace] the idea able to build this little life out of the way and unplugged from everything,' Duhamel explained. 'He finds peace in it but also a lot of loneliness and yearning for human connection and all those things. I think that if you're alone, doing this would be really tough. But that's what really drew me to this.' Another bonus is, that Duhamel gets to channel a bit of the character that Minnesota native Richard Dean Anderson made famous for seven seasons on ABC-TV from 1985 to 1992. '[I loved Guy's] innovation and ability MacGyver all these different gadgets. It was really fun,' Duhamel enthused. 'I love that I just thought that it was a great hook for the movie. So, I just love this world. I thought, 'What a great sort of contrast between this simple life and the industrial complex doing everything they can to use to find this guy, but run into a total David versus Goliath sort of situation.' NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 12: Josh Duhamel attends the Men's Health Lab hosted by Hearst Magazines ... More at Hearst Tower on June 12, 2025 in New York City. (Photo byfor Hearst Magazines) On top of utilitizing some MacGyver-type skills, Duhamel brings a bit of Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo to his character in Off the Grid in the way he faces off against the bad guys, even if wasn't intentional. 'I guess there's maybe a little bit [of Rambo in there], but I'm never gonna pretend that I'm Sylvester Stallone. That guy's a badass,' Duhamel said with a smile. 'He is more like a former Green Beret out there in Rambo: First Blood [Part II]." It was just an amazing movie. I guess I never really thought about it [with my character in Off the Grid]. From that point of view, I can see the similarities.' Duhamel, of course, lives a more peaceful existence off the grid away from acting and he hopes to visit his wooded getaway in Minnesota as often as he can. In the meantime, Duhamel is prepping his return to the Netflix hit Ransom Canyon, which was renewed for a second season this week and going into production in September. In the meantime, audiences can see Josh Duhamel in Off the Grid — which also stars María Elisa Camargo, Michael Zapesotsky, Ricky Russert and Michael Papajohn — which opens in select theaters on Friday and is available on Video on Demand.
Geek Tyrant
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Trailer for the Josh Duhamel and Greg Kinnear Action Thriller OFF THE GRID — GeekTyrant
Lionsgate has released the trailer for its upcoming action thriller Off the Grid , which stars Josh Duhamel and Greg Kinnear. The movie doesn't look like anything special or unique, just another one of these bad action films that make you wonder how in the hell they get a cast like this to sign on. In the film, 'After a morally-bankrupt company tries to weaponize a brilliant scientist's revolutionary new technology, he goes off the grid to safeguard humanity. 'When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the very man they are trying to catch. Armed with unrivaled brains and brawn, the wild genius turns Guerilla warfare into a deadly science.' The movie was directed by stuntman and filmmaker Johnny Martin, and it also stars Peter Stormare and María Elisa Camargo. Off the Grid will be released in select US theaters and on VOD on June 27th.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Holes: Greg Kinnear & 9 More Cast in Disney+ Reboot TV Show
Greg Kinnear and nine more actors have joined the cast of Disney+'s series. Holes is a young adult novel that was written by Louis Sachar and published in 1998. It was previously turned into a movie directed by Andrew Davis that was released by Walt Disney Pictures in April 2003. It starred Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, and Tim Blake Nelson. Disney is now rebooting Holes into a television show that comes from showrunner Liz Phang and writer Alina Mankin. In addition to Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) as the Warden, the cast of Holes includes Aidy Bryant (Shill, Saturday Night Live) as Sissy, Shay Rudolph (Lethal Weapon) as Hayley, Flor Delis Alicea as Queenie, Anire Kim Amoda (The Penguin) as Thumbelina, Noah Cottrell (The Spiderwick Chronicles) as Kitch, Iesha Daniels as Mars, Sophie Dieterlen as Sticky, Alexandra Doke (City on Fire) as Eyeball, and Maeve Press (Theresa Is a Mother) as Shrimp. 'Holes follows Hayley (Rudolph), a teenage girl sent to a detention camp where the ruthless Warden (Kinnear) forces the campers to dig holes for a mysterious purpose,' the synopsis for the series reads, via Deadline. This slightly differs from Sachar's book, as that story featured a male protagonist, Stanley Yelnats, who was sent to a juvenile detention camp for boys in Texas that was run by a female warden. Phang and Mankin both serve as executive producers on the show alongside Drew Goddard and Sarah Esberg of Goddard Textiles and Jac Schaeffer. Schaeffer will direct the pilot episode, while Andrea Massaro serves as co-executive producer. Walden Media, which produced the 2003 Holes movie, will also executive produce the pilot, as will Mike Medavoy. A Disney+ premiere date for the Holes television show has not yet been announced. The post Holes: Greg Kinnear & 9 More Cast in Disney+ Reboot TV Show appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
