Entertainment

Ethan Hawke has been acting since he was a kid. His latest project the Good Lord Bird is about abolitionist John Brown, and is based on the book by James McBride.

In a March 2020 interview, the Emmy-nominated host of RuPaul's Drag Race said his drag look was "one-part Cher, two-parts David Bowie, one-part Diana Ross and two heaping spoonfuls of Dolly Parton."

The HBO show uses sci-fi and superheroes to examine American racism. Cord Jefferson wrote the episode in which the main character goes back in time and to relive the trauma of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

With The Old Guard, Prince-Bythewood becomes the first Black woman to direct an adaptation of a comic book.

Ross, who died July 21, was a member of the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. She wrote "Twisted," which was recorded by both Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler. Originally broadcast in 1990.

Trejo has played menacing characters on Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy. The documentary, Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo, chronicles his years in prison. Originally broadcast March 14, 2018.

"This climate that we're in right now with our polarizing political views in this country, it was very similar in South Africa," the star of The Old Guard says. Originally broadcast Dec. 16, 2019.

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys plays the title role in the new HBO series, Perry Mason. His version of the iconic criminal defense attorney is younger and more hardboiled than the one Raymond Burr played in the popular TV show from the '50s and '60s. The new series focuses on Mason as a divorced private investigator in the early 1930s in Los Angeles — before he became a lawyer.

Actor Patrick Stewart talks about returning to the role of Captain Picard, coming from a working-class background and learning to do Shakespeare, and how getting older has changed his approach to acting.

Baranski started her career in theater and now stars as a progressive lawyer in The Good Fight. "I was a passionate acting student and nothing was going to stop me," the Emmy Award-winning actor says.

Willard, who died May 15, was known for his scene-stealing roles in the Christopher Guest films Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, and later the series Modern Family. Originally broadcast in 1997.

Janelle Monáe is interested in what it means to represent minority groups in art and music. She's currently starring in the Amazon series 'Homecoming.' And her 2018 CD 'Dirty Computer' was named one of the top albums of the year.

One of India's most beloved film stars, Khan, who died April 29, became internationally known for his work in films like Slumdog Millionaire and Life of Pi. Originally broadcast in 2012.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, Wrembel visited the Fresh Air studio to talk about his musical influences and to play, with his trio, songs from his new album, Django L'Impressionniste.

When nerds are depicted on screen, they are often bookworms and wallflowers who struggle to stand up for themselves. That's not the type of nerd Mindy Kaling wanted to focus on in Never Have I Ever, the Netflix series she co-created with Lang Fisher.

The burly actor, who died April 15, played the leading role in Death of a Salesman, in both the Broadway production as well as the 2000 TV movie. Dennehy spoke to David Bianculli in 1999.

Actor Zoe Kazan describes her new HBO series, The Plot Against America, as "scarily prescient." The show, which is adapted from Philip Roth's 2004 novel, is set in the U.S. between 1940 and 1942, and imagines a world in which aviator Charles Lindbergh has defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the race for the presidency, moving the country toward fascism.

Bateman plays a financial manager who launders money for Mexico's second biggest drug cartel in the Netflix series. He also recently directed The Outsider, HBO's adaptation of Stephen King's novel.

Growing up in the Bronx as the only child of an academic and a real estate broker, actor Kerry Washington remembers her family had two cars and a dishwasher in their apartment — which meant, "in my neighborhood, in my context, we were rich."

Azaria has voiced dozens of Simpsons' characters, starting with Mo the bartender. In the IFC comedy series Brockmire he plays a troubled baseball announcer who always speaks in his broadcaster voice.