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Talkhouse

Alex Ross Perry was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1984. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and worked at Kim’s Video in Manhattan. He is the director of the films Impolex, The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth, Golden Exits, Her Smell, Pavements and the new documentary Videoheaven.

Alex Ross Perry

Film

Three Great Things: Alex Ross Perry

Scott Z. Burns is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, director and playwright. His new Audible Original podcast, <a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/What-Could-Go-Wrong-Audiobook/B0F4GSVRGS?ref=mrq_aud_WCGW_van1&amp;source_code=MRQP30DTRIAL02804102508Y5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What Could Go Wrong</a>?, is out now. He is the writer, director, executive producer and creator of the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations, starring Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker, Edward Norton and Marion Cotillard. In film, Burns&#8217; writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum as well as The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects and The Laundromat for director Steven Soderbergh. As a director, Burns&#8217; credits include PU-239, starring Oscar Isaac and Paddy Considine, and The Report, starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening and Jon Hamm, which tells the story of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. Burns served as a producer for the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, as well as an executive producer for An Inconvenient Sequel and Sea of Shadows. On stage, Burns&#8217; play The Library, which deals with a high school shooting, was produced at the Public Theater and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play. Burns began his career in advertising; before leaving the industry, he was part of the team that created the &#8220;Got Milk?&#8221; campaign.

Scott Z. Burns

Three Great Things: Scott Z. Burns

Nina Conti&rsquo;s latest feature,<a href="https://quadcinema.com/film/sunlight/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Sunlight</a>, which she directed and stars in opposite co-writer Shenoah Allen, opens at the Quad in New York City on June 6. Comedian and ventriloquist Conti has won a British Comedy Award for storming Live at the Apollo, a BBC New Comedy Award, and a Grierson Award, and made a BAFTA-nominated film &ndash; all without moving her lips. She recently completed filming Spinal Tap 2, with Rob Reiner directing, and is currently taking her new live show, Whose Face is it Anyway?, on a world tour. Her television credits include QI, Russell Howard&#8217;s Good News, Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled and Christopher Guest&#8217;s HBO series Family Tree and she has made three documentary features, including Clowning Around and Her Master&#8217;s Voice, in which she took the bereaved puppets of her mentor, Ken Campbell, to a puppet graveyard in Kentucky.

Nina Conti

Three Great Things: Nina Conti

Paul Banks is a musician, songwriter and singer from New York, noted for fronting one of New York’s most admired and respected bands, Interpol. Interpol’s debut album, Turn On The Bright Lights, and the follow-up, Antics, are widely acknowledged as the soundtrack for the lower east side of New York in the 2000s, two of the city’s defining albums, each amassing 1 million sales worldwide and US Gold status. Interpol has since progressed through generations and seven studio albums to scale new heights in 2024, playing the biggest live show on record in Mexico City to upwards of 200,000 at Zócalo Square, and headlining shows including L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl, New York’s Forest Hills Stadium, and numerous others worldwide. Paul has released music in various other guises; partnering with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA as Banks &amp; Steelz, with Josh Kaufman and the Walkmen’s Matt Barrick as Muzz, and as a solo artist both as Julian Plenti and under his own name. Paul’s debut film score and OST for the film <a href="https://www.magnetreleasing.com/sistermidnight/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sister Midnight</a> is released, whilst Interpol works on new music set for 2026.

Paul Banks

Three Great Things: Paul Banks

Born in Mississippi and raised in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Charles Burnett is an independent filmmaker whose work has been praised for its portrayal of the African-American experience. A 4K restoration of his first feature film, <a href="https://kinolorber.com/film/killer-of-sheep" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Killer of Sheep</a>, which Burnett wrote, directed, produced, photographed, and edited in 1977, is now in theaters through Kino Lorber. Since then, the United States Library of Congress has declared the film a &#8220;national treasure,&#8221; as one of the first 50 films on the National Film Registry, and the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the &#8220;100 Essential Films&#8221; of all time. His other films include The Glass Shield, a groundbreaking narrative on police corruption and violence, My Brother’s Wedding, To Sleep With Anger (starring Danny Glover), and his lost 1999 film, The Annihilation of Fish starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave, which was finally released in early 2025. Burnett’s nonfiction work includes The Blues, produced by Martin Scorsese, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, and the PBS documentary Power To Heal, on the painful history of segregation at southern U.S. Hospitals. (Photo courtesy Milestone Films and the Walker Art Center.)

Charles Burnett

Three Great Things: Charles Burnett

Judy Greer is currently starring in Eric Larue, Michael Shannon’s directorial debut, also starring Alexander Skarsgård, Alison Pill and Tracy Letts, which is out now in theaters. Judy was most recently seen on television starring in Reboot, alongside Keegan Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, and Paul Reiser, and in the HBO limited series White House Plumbers opposite Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux. Her additional feature credits include Halloween, Halloween Kills, Jurassic World, Ant-Man, 13 Going on 30, the Academy Award winning The Descendants directed by Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go Bernadette opposite Cate Blanchett, and the cult classic hit Jawbreaker. She previously starred opposite Jim Carrey and Catherine Keener on Kidding, voiced the role of Cheryl on the Emmy-winning animated comedy Archer for 14 seasons and played Kitty Sanchez on Arrested Development, one of her most notable characters. In 2018, Judy made her feature film directorial debut with A Happening of Monumental Proportions, starring Common, Bradley Whiteford, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, Anders Holm, Katie Holmes, Rob Riggle and Storm Reid.

Judy Greer

Three Great Things: Judy Greer

Tim Key is a comedian, poet, actor, and writer who co-wrote and stars in the new comedy <a href="https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ballad-of-wallis-island/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Ballad of Wallis Island</a>, which is in select theaters from March 28 and everywhere from April 18. Key won the Perrier Award in 2009 and has since gone on to write and perform eight solo shows, including the smash hit, Mulberry. On screen, he is best known as Sidekick Simon in This Time with Alan Partridge, as well as The Double, Peep Show and The End of the F***ing World. Most recently, he was seen opposite Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 and played Commissioner Harrold Scott alongside Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan in See How They Run. His radio series Late Night Poetry with Tim Key has just been commissioned for a sixth season and Key also has written several successful poetry anthologies, including Chapters, He Used Thought as a Wife and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

Tim Key

Three Great Things: Tim Key

Alice Lowe’s sophomore directorial feature, <a href="https://geni.us/TIMESTALKER_Movie" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Timestalker</a>, which she wrote, directed and stars in, is out now through Level 33 Entertainment. She made her screenwriting debut with Sightseers (2012), directed by Ben Wheatley, in which she also starred. Prevenge (2016) was Alice&#8217;s directorial feature debut; she wrote, starred in and directed it while heavily pregnant. The film opened Venice Critics’ Week and screened at Toronto, LFF, Sitges, Rotterdam, SXSW and AFI before going on general release in the U.K. and U.S. to critical and audience acclaim. Alice&#8217;s other work includes three series of her sketch show Alice&#8217;s Wunderland for BBC Radio 4, several short films, and TV and film appearances such as Garth Marenghi&#8217;s Darkplace, Paddington, Hot Fuzz and Horrible Histories. More recently she has starred in BAFTA-nominated U.K. indie The Ghoul, Adult Life Skills and Locke. (Photo by Simon Webb.)

Alice Lowe

Three Great Things: Alice Lowe

Michaela Watkins can currently be seen playing the title character in the comedy drama Suze, out now in theaters. She was recently seen in the movies Paint, with Owen Wilson, Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings, starring Julia-Louis Dreyfus, and in the mini series Tiny Beautiful Things, opposite Kathryn Hahn, and The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried. She famously played the lead role in Hulu’s Casual and her other TV credits include The Unicorn, Catastrophe, Search Party, Get Shorty, Wet Hot American Summer, Transparent, Veep, Enlightened, Modern Family, Children&#8217;s Hospital, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Key and Peele, The Kroll Show and Drunk History. Her indie film credits include Lake Bell&#8217;s In a World; Joey Soloway’s Afternoon Delight; Brigsby Bear, opposite Kyle Mooney and Greg Kinnear; Brittany Runs a Marathon with Jillian Bell; The Way Back, opposite Ben Affleck; and Wanderlust, opposite Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. (Photo by Catie Laffoon.)

Michaela Watkins

Three Great Things: Michaela Watkins

J Spaceman, aka Jason Pierce, is the London-based artist behind Spiritualized, and formerly Spaceman 3. His latest record, Music for Williams Eggleston&#8217;s Stranded in Canton, with John Coxon, is out now.

J Spaceman

Music

Three Great Things: J Spaceman

Morena Baccarin can currently be seen opposite Anthony Mackie the new action thriller Elevation, which is out now in theaters. In Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and this year’s Deadpool &amp; Wolverine, she plays Vanessa, the tough and witty love interest of Ryan Reynolds. She will soon lead CBS’s new series Sheriff County, a spinoff about her recurring Fire Country character, and star opposite Jason Mamoa and David Bautista in Amazon’s feature Wrecking Crew. Her long list of television credits includes a regular series in Fox’s Gotham, the lead in ABC’s V, the lead (and a producer) of CBS’s The Endgame, Jordan Peele’s The Twilight Zone, and of course, Homeland, for which she was nominated for Emmy and SAG awards. As a new Juilliard grad, Morena broke through in Firefly, which was followed by its big-screen adaptation Serenity. Her other film credits include Paul Feig’s comedy hit Spy, the Gerard Butler thriller Greenland, and Fast Charlie, opposite Pierce Brosnan.

Morena Baccarin

Three Great Things: Morena Baccarin

The 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Alan Rudolph’s <a href="https://www.filmswelike.com/films/breakfast-of-champions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Breakfast of Champions</a>, an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s cult novel starring Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte, Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly and Lukas Haas, is out now in theaters. A pioneer in the American independent film movement, Rudolph began his professional career as an assistant director before being hired by Robert Altman to work on The Long Goodbye and later his masterpiece, Nashville. The two remained lifelong friends and collaborators as Altman served as producer on many of Rudolph’s future projects. His films are noted for their fluid style, unpredictable humor, and glowing performances, often peculiar ensemble-based stories exploring the paradoxical complexities of being human, and he’s perhaps best known for Welcome to L.A., Remember My Name, Choose Me, Trouble In Mind, The Moderns Mrs. Parker, The Vicious Circle, Afterglow and Breakfast of Champions, nominated for the Berlin Golden Bear in 1999. (Photo by Joyce Rudolph.)

Three Great Things