Long before James Shin became executive vice-president of film and television for SB Projects, he was a piano and violin prodigy who toured with orchestras and performed alongside Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma. "Prodigy. I hate that word," says Shin, w...

July 19, 2023

Bob McCracken, actor, director, coach, was best known for his role as Brendan Roarke, an Irish King in five seasons of The Sons of Anarchy . Bob grew up a military brat. He attended elementary school in Philadelphia, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Largo Flo...

MLK: Now Is The Time

Meta Quest

Time Studios, Meta, Flight School Studio

Lola Tung's casting as the lead in Prime Video's The Summer I Turned Pretty fulfills a dream she's had since she played the Tin Man in a sixth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz . The actress studied drama at LaGuardia High School, aka New York's F...

July 5, 2023

Kelly Bennett, daughter of the renowned late broadcaster Robert (Bob) and Marjie Bennett, has come full circle by endowing a fund to honor her father's name at the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences. The Bob Bennett Internship Fund will provide fo...

Youth basketball is the setting for the sports drama Swagger, but creator-showrunner-director Reggie Rock Bythewood makes sure the Apple TV+ show is about more than shooting hoops. Ambition. Opportunity. Identity. Parenthood. Growing up Black in Amer...

June 19, 2023

For Amanda Warren, playing the lead role of Camae in Katori Hall's play The Mountaintop marks a full-circle moment on a few levels. She auditioned to be an understudy when the Olivier Award-winning production from P-Valley creator Hall had its Broadw...

June 14, 2023

While still a senior at New York's New School of Drama, Jordan E. Cooper was workshopping Ain't No Mo' , his satire on living while Black in America, as narrated by a drag queen (played by Cooper). Empire creator Lee Daniels, then looking for new voi...

June 6, 2023

A graduate of England's prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Billy Harris acted in commercials and on stage prior to being cast on the Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso as soccer player Colin Hughes. "It being my first TV show, it was quite daunting,...

June 2, 2023

Long before director Michael Schultz came to helm a dozen (and counting!) episodes of The CW's high-school drama All American , now in its fifth season, he directed another coming-of-age hit about a group of Black high school kids: the revered 1975 c...

May 30, 2023