Rising Talents of Film and Television

Emerging faces in Hollywood are doing their part to change societal assumptions of masculinity. Harper, best known as Chidi in the Emmy-nominated NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” takes the stereotype of a male lead and rips it apart in his role as an indecisive philosophy professor. “​I think realizing that there are certain ideas of Blackness and certain ideas of maleness that sort of pervade a lot of art and media, I like to subvert that when I can,” Harper told OZY on “The Carlos Watson Show.”

Who’s the real Tatiana Maslany? Best known for her five-season run on “Orphan Black,” where she plays lead character Sarah Manning and Sarah’s cohort of more than a dozen clones, Maslany had to be distinctly different. On “The Carlos Watson Show,” the Canadian actor goes deep on “Orphan Black,” the strange sexual energy of playing a nun on HBO’s “Perry Mason” and the existential crisis of the pandemic.

Working in Los Angeles as a restorative yoga instructor, “Oge the Yogi” met Ged Doherty, a Hollywood producer and co-founder of Raindog Films. Believing Egbuonu had special talent, Doherty persuaded her to drop everything and dive into the film industry. The learning curve was steep, but Egbuonu embraced the challenges. Now she has made a name for herself, creating and directing the powerful documentary “(In)Visible Portraits,” which was picked up by the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Julie Delpy has fought to tell authentic stories about women for years. After a multi-decade career in Hollywood, she has learned more than a few things about what it takes to stay relevant and get paid. First an actor, then a writer, director and producer, Delpy has advice for anyone trying to come up in Hollywood today. Her latest project, “On the Verge,” follows four women as they navigate the highs and lows of their midlife crises.

Growing up in the Peckham district of London to parents of Nigerian descent, John Boyega performed his first acting role as a leopard in a grade-school play. Hollywood came calling and the world came to know Boyega as Finn, a stormtrooper, in 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” But these days, he believes it’s vital to stand up for Black lives before anything else. “Look, I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this, but fuck that,” he said at a Hyde Park, London, rally following the killing of George Floyd.

The son of a maid and a chemical plant worker from the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, Lázaro Ramos joined a theater troupe as a teenager to overcome his debilitating shyness. Now one of Brazil’s biggest film and TV stars, he has been using his celebrity status to push the country’s most powerful media company to change how Black Brazilian stories are told.

on The Carlos Watson Show!

You return to your childhood neighborhood, only nothing is the same. What do you do? For Gerima, the answer is easy: You make a movie about it. The mostly autobiographical “Residue” follows Jay, a student who returns home from film school intending to write a script about his childhood, but finds himself struggling to reconnect with the place as it succumbs to white gentrification.

The talented Isabel Sandoval sure can wear a lot of hats: writing, directing, producing, editing and starring in her 2019 Netflix film “Lingua Franca.” The story centers on Olivia, an undocumented trans Filipina caregiver in New York City who becomes romantically involved with a man while pursuing a marriage-based green card. A trans Filipina immigrant herself, Sandoval insists the film is not autobiographical, but it does come from a place of authenticity, and she shares many of the tensions, paranoid fears and emotions of her protagonist.

The British daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Coel broke through with her Channel 4 sitcom “Chewing Gum,” a coming-of-age tale about a young Black woman finding her voice and sexuality in “hilariously filthy” fashion, as The Guardian put it. And her 12-episode HBO series, “I May Destroy You,” quickly became one of the must-see shows of 2020. Playing the protagonist, Arabella, Coel tackles the trauma of being sexually assaulted — a battle she fought herself after being drugged and assaulted in 2016.

You might have seen him in “24,” FX’s “Legion” or even “Homeland.” Now, Iranian American actor Navid Negahban is starring in his second season of “Tehran” on Apple TV+ and also building an artist haven in Los Angeles. In this episode of “The Carlos Watson Show,” the “man of a thousand faces” himself discusses leaving Iran for Hollywood, his latest adventure and finding true happiness.

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