This summer, get ready for a peek into the dark underbelly of American showbiz with the latest Netflix series, Hollywood. A reimagination of the post-World War II Tinsel Town, the seven-part limited series, is creator Ryan Murphy’s latest venture for the streaming giant.
The show has everything from a group of struggling actors “turning tricks” out of a gas station to famous directors hosting naked pool parties.
But in addition to exposing the sleaziness, the show delves explicitly into the murkier waters of discrimination against vulnerable communities in the world of showbiz.
Check out the first teaser of the show set for premiere on May 1, here :
Dreamland Reimagined
Murphy has definitely entered his Tarantino phase with this latest alternate history fiction.
Hollywood explores the whatiffery of Blacks, gays, and women running the show and making the calls alongside white, straight men in the 1950s movie industry.
It’s the American dream reimagined with the much-needed element of inclusivity.
Set in what is easily creator Murphy’s favorite time in history, the Golden Age of Hollywood, the series also dares to imagine a more just world.
According to the show’s official synopsis, it dares to expose and examine the decades-old power dynamics in the entertainment landscape, and how things might look like if they were to be dismantled.
“With the present so fraught and the future uncertain, we turned to the past for direction,” writes co-creator and executive producer Mock about the series. She goes on:
“What if a band of outsiders were given a chance to tell their own story? What if the person with greenlight power was a woman? The screenwriter, a black man? What if the heroine was a woman of color? The matinee idol openly gay? And what if they were all invited into the room where the decisions are made, entering fully and unapologetically themselves to leave victorious and vaunted, their place in history cemented.”
What’s interesting, however, is that most of the darkness explored in Hollywood continues to exist even today. And at its best, Hollywood can hope to represent what is the reality in its alternate reality premise.
Galaxy of Stars
The star-studded cast includes The Politician’s David Corenswet as Jack Castello alongside Darren Criss as Raymond Ansley, Jeremy Pope as Archie Coleman, Laura Harrier as Camille Washington, Samara Weaving as Claire Wood, Dylan McDermott as Ernie, Holland Taylor as Ellen Kincaid, Patti LuPone as Avis Amberg, Jim Parsons as Henry Wilson, Jake Picking as Rock Hudson, Queen Latifah as Hattie McDaniel, and Michelle Krusiec as Anna May Wong.
As yet another Ryan Murphy series, Hollywood too has a lot of gloss and camp at play — explosions, lavish ballrooms, Rock Hudson cameos, and Jim Parsons yelling at a dinner party when someone fails to recognize Scarlett O’Hara.
The show is written by Murphy, his old partners in crime Ian Brennan and Janet Mock, along with Reilly Smith, and directed by Murphy, Mock, Daniel Minahan, Michael Uppendahl, and Jessica Yu.
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