“Every single day I did it, because I’ve never done a show where the past and the present and the future were all in one place,” Davidson said about how the show felt refreshing. “So we’re going into a show that’s a show about a show. So it’s a workplace show.”

In Martin, Varnell Hill was the foil to the titular character. In The Varnell Hill Show, it’s vice versa.

“Now he comes to haunt me,” the actor said jokingly. “You know what I mean? He comes back to haunt me, but he comes back as multiple characters. If you looked at Martin’s show, Martin Payne wasn’t just one Martin.”

Davidson has been in the business for decades, and he wants to make the show the best it could be.

“And the common denominator for me that makes it the best is that I get to bring my gift to it, which is making people laugh, entertaining people, and making people feel good,” the actor said. “So for me, doing that every day, shooting that show was really the fruits of a lot of work and a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of just frustrations.”

About The Varnell Hill Show

Synopsis: Nearly three decades after audiences first met him, Varnell Hill is stepping back into the spotlight — and he’s determined to prove he’s still the star of the show. Set behind the scenes of a long-running late-night talk show, The Varnell Hill Show follows Varnell (Davidson) as he fights to stay relevant in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape. Between network executives eager to modernize the show, a chaotic writers’ room, celebrity guests, family drama, and his own outsized ego, Varnell quickly discovers that keeping a television empire together may be harder than building one in the first place.

The Varnell Hill Show eight-episode first season will make its worldwide debut on Paramount+ with two episodes on Tuesday, September 1, followed by one new episode every Tuesday through October 13.

The post Tommy Davidson Talks The Varnell Hill Show, Reuniting with Martin Lawrence appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

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Thompson has been behind the scenes as a director on many TV shows, including The Goldbergs, The CW’s Stargirl, Star Trek: Picard, Resident Alien, and Will Trent. However, Anna Pigeon was a different beast for her.

“I’ve been behind the scenes a lot as a director, and I’ve directed my own feature, but this is the first time I’ve done my own TV show that I’ve been working on for almost 15 years” Thompson tells Nerd Reactor. “It feels weird. I mean, it does kind of feel weird that I’m not acting in it, you know what I mean? It kind of feels weird.”

Even with many movies and shows under her belt, there is still much to learn.

“But it was so much work and it gave me so much respect for people who produce TV shows because it is just an immense amount of work. It’s an immense amount of give and take. I learned so much from Morwyn and Sonia, my producers, and Morwyn’s the showrunner, about how to respect everybody’s job. I mean, I feel like I’ve always done that, but it was a really great learning curve, and everybody has to reinvent themselves all the time in our new culture. So this was a big reinvention for me, and it’s very exciting to be doing something completely new and different.”

About Anna Pigeon

Anna Pigeon, played by Tracy Spiridakos, is a former city slicker who became a park ranger after a devastating loss changed the trajectory of her life forever. While Anna tries to outrun her demons, her focus turns to solving crimes that have taken place within national park grounds, no matter who or what gets in her way.

The upcoming crime drama is based on the best-selling mystery novels by Nevada Barr and also stars Paulina Alexis, Ronnie Rowe Jr., Tricia Helfer, Kim Coates, Crystle Lightning and Nikki Hallow.

Lea Thompson directs and executive produces the 10-episode season.

The post Lea Thompson Reflects on Reinventing Herself Behind the Camera With Anna Pigeon appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

One of the stars of the show, Garret Dillahunt (Fear the Walking Dead), is portraying William Macon. Per Deadline, he plays “modern cowboy William Macon, a self-righteous, conspiracy-minded man who masks his ruthless ambition behind a charming and calculated facade.”

Nerd Reactor spoke to the actor about his role in the DC show set in the DC Universe.

“I would certainly say I am an antagonistic presence to the Lanterns, but I know that Macon doesn’t think he’s a villain,” Dillahunt said. “He thinks they have similar goals in a lot of ways, but just different ways of going about it. And I think that’s where the tension comes in.”

There have been many fan theories as to his character, with some thinking that he was going to play Green Arrow.

“I kind of like all the fan theories,” the actor explained. “I like that they’re a little confused. I get accused of… or people suspect me of being all kinds of different characters, and I’m excited to… some of them are right, and it’ll be fun to see what happens when they find out who’s right and who’s wrong.”

About Lanterns

Synopsis: Lanterns follows new recruit John Stewart and Lantern legend Hal Jordan, two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery with cosmic ties as they investigate a murder in the American heartland.

HBO in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. The Lanterns pilot is co-written by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, who are co-creators for the series. Mundy serves as showrunner.

The first two episodes are directed by James Hawes, with Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel and Alik Sakharov also tapped to direct.

The series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, James Gunn, Peter Safran, King, Ron Schmidt, and Hawes. Based on the DC comic characters from “Green Lantern.”

The post Garret Dillahunt Explains Why His ‘Lanterns’ Character Doesn’t See Himself as a Villain appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

Check out our video interview below!

About Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 sees the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise – led by Captain Christopher Pike – embark on a series of thrilling and emotional adventures across the stars. As they journey to strange new worlds, they will battle inner demons and external threats, encounter colorful new characters, reunite with familiar faces and confront terrifying aliens. Through it all, they strive to embrace a bright, hopeful future.

The post Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Cast on Hidden Talents, Challenging Episodes, and Dream Vacations appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

J.K. Simmons, known for his roles as J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man and Omni-Man in Invincible, portrays Eamon Sweeney, the boss of The Westies, inspired by real-life gangsters.

“JJJ is pretty much all bark, as you said, and he barks very loudly and quickly,” Simmons compares his Spider-Man character to his The Westies character. “I think one of the things, and this was just on the page to me, in the way that Michael and Chris wrote it, there’s a quiet menace there, and you see the same thing often with a lot of characters in the show, really.”

As Sweeney, he has to deal with other criminal organizations and the younger members.

“You see it with Hamish Allan-Headley as John Gotti,” Simmons added. “You see it with Titus, you see it with Jimmy. I mean, a lot of the time, the younger ones might tend to be a little more there, might be a little more bravado and in your face, but the older guys who have survived for this long, I think that quiet menace is very organic to who these guys are.”

The showrunners wanted more freedom in the story, and so they decided not to make this a biopic or docudrama.

“We’re not doing a biopic or a docudrama, so we’re not using the names of Jimmy Coonin or Mickey Featherstone or Mickey Spillane,” Panes said. “You know, what we’re doing is creating a fictionalized show inspired by a multitude of characters from that era, so to distill the essence of it, because we want audiences to stay with these characters over multiple seasons and grow with them and three-dimensionalize them and make them kind of people you want to invite in.”

About The Westies

Synopsis: The Westies is a gritty and kinetic crime drama centering on New York City’s infamously violent Irish gang of the same name. The series is set in the early 1980s when the construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center on the Westies’ home turf in Hell’s Kitchen promises a financial windfall. Despite being outnumbered fifty-to-one by the Five Families of the Italian Mafia, the Westies’ legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile détente. But internal conflict between the brash younger generation and the old-school leadership threatens to set a match to this powder keg, which will sweep the Westies into the FBI’s ever-deepening investigation into the Italian mafia.

The series stars J.K. Simmons, Titus Welliver, Tom Brittney, Stanley Morgan, Sarah Bolger, Jessica Frances Dukes, Hamish Allan-Headley, Vincent Walsh, Allen Leech, and Hillary McCormack. Additional cast includes Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Jeremy Walmsley, and Rohan Mead.

The series is written by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes.

It’s directed by Alan Taylor (101, 102), Chris Grismer (103, 104), John Fawcett (105, 106), and Adam Kane (107, 108).

Executive prodicers are Chris Brancato, Michael Panes, Raymond Quinlan, Alan Taylor, Frank Siracusa, and John Weber.

The post J.K. Simmons on Finding the ‘Quiet Menace’ Behind His Westies Mob Boss appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

Filmmakers are inspired by the films before them. With Sébastien Vaniček and Evil Dead Burn, he was focused on having his own style.

“I’m trying to stay away from movies I love because I don’t want those directors to influence me too much,” the director tells Nerd Reactor. “I’m trying to create my own style and my own thing.”

Evil Dead Burn balances the shared moments that many have had, and then the filmmakers would try to take those moments and twist them.

“We always try to create real things,” Vaniček said. “We start the process by talking about things we experienced, and then we make them even more horrible. We put the stakes higher, and everything is higher, more dangerous, more horrible, more this, more that. So characters are a little bit bigger than life, but we start the writing process with things from real life, from our experience.”

The kissing scene in the film is sure to be the most talked-about scene. It’s bloody, yet also very passionate.

“I think also the fact that you, for example, love that kissing scene, there is a reason,” Souheila Yacoub tells me. “It’s not just aesthetic. It’s how we say in French, ‘gratuit’… free. It’s because there is a context with the characters, and we believe in their relationship in their past lives.”

You can check out our full video interview above!

Evil Dead Burns releases in theaters on July 10, 2026.

The post Evil Dead Burn Director Explains Why He Avoids Copying His Favorite Movies appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

Memory is one of the important themes for this season’s Silo. Nerd Reactor had the chance to ask the cast and creator about what memories they would like to keep.

Rebecca Ferguson shared two important memories, one involving BBC’s The White Queen, and the other with Tom Cruise for Mission: Impossible.

“The biggest thing for me was I was cast in the White Queen, which was a BBC production,” Ferguson tells Nerd Reactor. “I was the lead of this 10-part drama series, and I remember sitting with Max Irons next to me, and there were so many essays. I’d never done anything like this. I’d done like one film in Sweden, basically, and I remember looking at him going, ‘King and Queen of England? Like this is bonkers. Look at us.’ And I remember just feeling big and it felt exciting.

“I think the second one was when I got a phone call on a camel in the desert saying that Tom Cruise wanted me to be in Mission [Impossible]. That was weird. The camel was called Barbie.”

Silo creator Graham Yost talks about one of his fondest memories regarding Speed, which he wrote the screenplay.

“So the first time I saw the entire movie, Speed was in a small theater on the lot at 20th Century Fox,” Yost said. “And there’s this moment where Keanu Reeves, as Jack Traven, jumps from the car that he’s commandeered onto the bus. And as he jumped onto the bus, it was shot perfectly. Keanu was fantastic. The thought that went through my head was, ‘My life just changed. My life is going to be different.’ I don’t know if this movie’s going to make a lot of money, but I know that it’s a good movie. And that was only 30 minutes into the movie, and little did I know how amazing it was gonna be from then.”

About Silo Season 3

Season three of “Silo” continues the saga of a dystopian society of 10,000 people living underground under mysterious circumstances, while revealing an origin story set centuries earlier. In the present, Juliette Nichols (Ferguson) survives her forced “cleaning” but returns with memory loss as the silo recovers from rebellion and faces a dangerous new threat. Meanwhile, in the “Before Times,” journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) and Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) uncover a conspiracy that pulls them into a chain of events with catastrophic, irreversible consequences. Based on Hugh Howey’s New York Times bestselling trilogy, “Silo.”

The ensemble cast returning alongside Ferguson includes Common, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Alexandria Riley, Shane McRae, Remmie Milner, Rick Gomez, Billy Postlethwaite, and Clare Perkins. Joining the cast for season three are Zukerman and Henwick, who appeared in the season two finale, along with Laura Innes, Jessica Brown Findlay, Morven Christie, Reed Birney, and Matt Craven, with Colin Hanks set to recur. Steve Zahn will also return.

“Silo” is produced by Apple Studios. The series is executive produced by Yost, Michael Dinner, Nina Jack, Joanna Thapa, Ferguson, Morten Tyldum, Howey, Amber Templemore, Fred Golan, Rémi Aubuchon and AMC Studios.

The post Silo’s Rebecca Ferguson and Creator Share the Career Memories They’d Never Want to Lose appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

Jesse Eisenberg (Batman v Superman, Zombieland) voices Dort, an alien robot who falls for an Earthling. For the actor’s inspiration, it was musicals that got him into acting.

“I did see Home Alone in the theater like 12 times,” Eisenberg tells Nerd Reactor. “I must have been six or seven. The truth is, though, I would never have assumed I could be in a movie. I wanted to be in musicals. So when I was younger, we lived in New Jersey, went into New York City, and when I saw people in the ensemble of musicals, I thought I could do that. But I didn’t have really the highest of aspirations. I wasn’t one of these kids thinking, ‘I’m gonna take over Hollywood.’ I was like, ‘I hope I get an understudy ensemble role in Les Misérables,’ you know.”

Allison Janney is known for her work in The West Wing, Mom, and I, Tonya. In Minions & Monsters, she voices the tour guide who teaches guests about the importance of Minions James and Henry and their contributions to Hollywood’s history.

“Carol Burnett was my first introduction to wanting to be in show business,” she said. “Yes, Jaws. I was like, ‘I want to be in that.’ I even wanted to be Chrissie, the girl who gets eaten by the shark at the beginning. I used to do it in the pool all the time and scare people. Yeah, that was low ambition at the time.”

Voicing the role of Debbie, a suffragette who falls for Dort, is Zoey Deutch (Zombieland).

“For me, the actress that really changed my brain chemistry was Katherine Hepburn,” Deutch said. “So all of her movies, I was like, ‘Whoa, what an amazing actress. How did she do that?’ So, Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story, those films really changed me.”

About Minions & Monsters

Synopsis: This is the rambunctious, ridiculous and totally true story of how the Minions conquered Hollywood, became movie stars, lost everything, unleashed monsters onto the world and then banded together to try and save the planet from the mayhem they had just created.

Voice cast: Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Zoey Deutch, Bobby Moynihan, Phil LaMarr, with Trey Parker and Pierre Coffin

Written by: Brian Lynch and Pierre Coffin

Directed by: Pierre Coffin

Minions & Monsters releases in theaters on July 1, 2026.

The post Jesse Eisenberg, Allison Janney & Zoey Deutch on What Inspired Them to Act – Minions & Monsters Red Carpet appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

The film is directed by Kenji Tanigaki, known for his action directing in the Rurouni Kenshin live-action films. It stars Xie Miao as Wang Wei, a tradesman who will fight his way to save his kidnapped daughter. Joe Taslim portrays Navin, a journalist also on the hunt for the criminal organization.

“Last decade, I got lucky to be part of such an amazing action project called The Raid, and it changed how people watch action movies,” Taslim tells Nerd Reactor. “And now this decade, 2020 to 2030, in The Furious, I know for sure this movie is a game-changer as well. I’m part of it as well. Well, I can’t complain. This has been an amazing two decades, and to be a part of the movies that really changed the game of people watching action movies.”

Brian Le is a rising martial arts star who has appeared in Everything Everywhere All at Once opposite Michelle Yeoh. In The Furious, he is a tough henchman who will give Wang and Navin a tough time.

“I found it very beautiful,” Le said. “I think it’s a very special case where all the cast themselves have 20+ years of martial arts experience as well as action filmmaking experience. Within the rehearsal rooms, on camera, off camera, we actually spent a lot of time together, and we actually became friends. We actually became brothers.”

Joey Iwanaga, who can be seen in Alice in Borderland and the upcoming live-action Blue Lock film, is a villain who is trying to move up in the world.

“The first thing [Director Kenji] told me was that we want to make this the best action movie in history,” Iwanaga recalled. “When I first got the call from him, I was like, ‘Really? Like me? Are you sure?’ Because I’m the young guy in this team and I just had to give it my all.”

About The Furious

Synopsis: After the daughter of Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is kidnapped by a criminal network and he receives no help from the corrupt police, Wei sets out on a rampage to find her himself. His only ally is Navin (Joe Taslim) – a relentless journalist whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Fueled by a furious vengeance, the unlikely duo ruthlessly fights against the kidnappers in this explosive martial arts showdown.

The film is directed by Kenji Tanigaki and written by Mak Tin Shu, Lei Zhilong, Shum Kwan Sin and Frank Hui. It’s produced by Bill Kong, Shan Tam and Frank Hui.

The cast includes Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Manatsanun Phanlerdwongsakul, Guo Junqing, Winai Wiangyangkung, Yayan Ruhian and Jija Yanin.

The Furious releases in theaters on June 12, 2026.

The post Joe Taslim Believes The Furious Can Change Action Movies Like The Raid Did appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

“I would be first-wave dead,” Riggs tells Nerd Reactor. “I would be out like the first 12 hours of the virus. I would be dead.”

The actor commented while discussing his latest dark comedy film, Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage-Fueled Karma. The inspiration for the film came from director/writer Shane Brady and producer Emily Zercher, who were hacked and lost $20,000 that was supposed to be a down payment on their first home. As a result, they both crafted a comedic revenge film. It also reunites Riggs with his former The Walking Dead co-star Katelyn Nacon.

Riggs portrays the antagonist who wreaks havoc on the Rumble family. Later on, the family gets their revenge. Parts of the film were shot inside and outside of his real home at the time.

“A lot of the stuff that we shot in the hacker’s house was my actual house,” Riggs revealed.

“His house at the time,” Nacon clarified. “He does not live there anymore. So do not go to that house and try to bug the people who live there.”

Riggs’ role as the hacker was more than he bargained for, with the filming feeling very intense.

“This film was probably one of the most invasive experiences in my life,” he said.

However, it was still a film that he cherishes.

“It would have sucked if it were anyone else at the helm other than Shane,” he explained. “But we had just the best experience and the best time. It was the best cast and the best crew.”

Nacon jumped at the opportunity because of Shane.

“[Shane] has a very interesting way of writing, and his humor is so specific that sometimes you don’t get it until you hear it out loud,” she said. “But once you hear it out loud, you’re going to be laughing your guts out until you’re vomiting.”

Even with the film’s chaotic scenes, both actors talked about its message of connection and collaboration.

“It’s just a group of people coming together to create something cool,” Riggs said. “It’s more honest. It’s more of a love letter to making movies and creativity and indie filmmaking in general.”

Nacon added about the importance of being in a community.

“Community is a huge thing,” she said. “Even if you’re going through the worst parts of your life, if you have the right people around you, those horrible things don’t seem as bad.”

About Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage-Fueled Karma

Based on true events that happened to Director Shane Brady and Producer Emily Zercher, the film stars The Walking Dead alum Chandler Riggs, Owen Atlas (Little Evil), Collin Thompson, Richard Riehle (Office Space), Katelyn Nacon (The Walking Dead), Shane Brady (Breathing Happy), and NHL Hall of Famer and Founder of the Tampa Bay Lightning Phil Esposito.

Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage Fueled Karma was released on VOD on June 2, 2026.

The post Chandler Riggs Says He’d Be ‘First-Wave Dead’ in a Zombie Apocalypse appeared first on Nerd Reactor.