logo
Boardwalk Empire star Devin Harjes dies at 41, following short battle with cancer

Boardwalk Empire star Devin Harjes dies at 41, following short battle with cancer

7NEWS02-06-2025
Boardwalk Empire star Devin Harjes has died at the age of 41 following a short battle with cancer.
Harjes died at Mount Sinai West hospital in New York on Tuesday, after he was diagnosed with cancer in February, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Harjes portrayed Jack Dempsey on the HBO hit. Other fans might remember him as Rikers Island nurse Oscar, when he appeared in Marvel's Daredevil.
The actor also had smaller credits in Orange Is the New Black, Blue Bloods, and The Forest Is Red.
The actor won the Best Actor gong at the Tolentino International Film Festival in Italy for The Forest Is Red.
Harjes was born on July 29, 1983 in Lubbock, Texas. He later relocated to New York to pursue acting.
He is survived by his parents, Randy and Rosanne Harjes.
Director Antonio DiFonzo shared his grief on Facebook.
'Terribly sad news as we lost Devin Harjes, an amazing actor and friend.
'He was constantly striving to be better and put his heart and soul into everything he did! We will never forget you and your amazing part in The Boyz of Summer and our lives. Rest in peace, Lion Heart!'
Friend Annette Waggoner also shared a tribute.
'Devin grew up riding with my boys. He was a special young man that was talented horseback and even more talented as an Actor.
'The world has lost another beautiful young person. Prayers and love to Randy Harjes and family.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life
Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life

The Age

time2 days ago

  • The Age

Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life

Time travel doesn't exist yet, and let's be honest, if it did, humans couldn't be trusted to use it responsibly. Thankfully we have television, able to transport us back in time to a world before television. To a time when cars were horses, and jeans were the distant dream of someone trapped in a corset. And there are certainly a lot of televisual time machines floating around out there these days. Since the success of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes' historical drama following the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants in the early 20th century, we have officially been living in the age of scandalous prestige period drama. And what a time to be alive! In the wake of Downton Abbey, TV has gone all in on luxurious sets, fabulous old-timey clothes, and giant casts of people far sexier than you'll ever find depicted in some dusty oil painting. The historical accuracy is rarely (read: never) the point: we're after big costumes, big mansions, big betrayals and big reactions, preferably in an accent that actors probably call 'Olden Days'. They come in all styles, united through the inherent melodrama and wondrous escapism of watching rich people suffer rich people problems. Some are overly self-serious (Wolf Hall), some are utter schlock (The Tudors). Some prioritise romance (Victoria), others the potent cocktail of humour and violence (The Great). Some go for opulence and spectacle: The Crown was famously one of the most expensive shows ever made. And others crank the sex appeal up to 11, a smorgasbord of witty repartee and semi-nudity: ahem, Bridgerton; ahem, Mary & George. But one period drama on television right now outdoes them all. It's ambitious, lavish, provocative and utterly engrossing. It has also flown under the radar, lost in the maelstrom of shows set in the histrionic days of yore. Julian Fellowes' follow-up to Downton Abbey is even better than its predecessor. It just aired its third season on HBO; in Australia, it streams on Paramount+. It is called The Gilded Age. The Gilded Age is set in New York City, during the boom years of the 1880s. It primarily follows the trials and tribulations of two extremely rich families – the 'new money' Russell family, whose patriarch George is a ruthless business tycoon and ambitious futurist, and the 'old money' Van Rhijn-Brook family, whose wealth has been inherited over generations and who refuse to accept these new-timey industrialists into their exclusive society. When approached without irony, a show about the rich and royal quibbling over etiquette and reputation can become tiresome quickly (looking at you, The Crown). But by moving the setting from an old country estate in England to the bustling streets of a booming New York, Fellowes presents a world slightly more recognisable to us modern plebs, and therefore ripe for satire. In the reality we live in, where the pettiness and trifles of the obscenely rich are the catalyst for so many of the world's ills, there is a joy in seeing that entitled upper crust confined to their ballrooms and mansions, where their rivalries and game-playing are pure spectacle, rather than likely to bring about the fall of civilisation. It's riveting and hilarious, rather than terrifying and depressing.

Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life
Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life

Sydney Morning Herald

time2 days ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life

Time travel doesn't exist yet, and let's be honest, if it did, humans couldn't be trusted to use it responsibly. Thankfully we have television, able to transport us back in time to a world before television. To a time when cars were horses, and jeans were the distant dream of someone trapped in a corset. And there are certainly a lot of televisual time machines floating around out there these days. Since the success of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes' historical drama following the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants in the early 20th century, we have officially been living in the age of scandalous prestige period drama. And what a time to be alive! In the wake of Downton Abbey, TV has gone all in on luxurious sets, fabulous old-timey clothes, and giant casts of people far sexier than you'll ever find depicted in some dusty oil painting. The historical accuracy is rarely (read: never) the point: we're after big costumes, big mansions, big betrayals and big reactions, preferably in an accent that actors probably call 'Olden Days'. They come in all styles, united through the inherent melodrama and wondrous escapism of watching rich people suffer rich people problems. Some are overly self-serious (Wolf Hall), some are utter schlock (The Tudors). Some prioritise romance (Victoria), others the potent cocktail of humour and violence (The Great). Some go for opulence and spectacle: The Crown was famously one of the most expensive shows ever made. And others crank the sex appeal up to 11, a smorgasbord of witty repartee and semi-nudity: ahem, Bridgerton; ahem, Mary & George. But one period drama on television right now outdoes them all. It's ambitious, lavish, provocative and utterly engrossing. It has also flown under the radar, lost in the maelstrom of shows set in the histrionic days of yore. Julian Fellowes' follow-up to Downton Abbey is even better than its predecessor. It just aired its third season on HBO; in Australia, it streams on Paramount+. It is called The Gilded Age. The Gilded Age is set in New York City, during the boom years of the 1880s. It primarily follows the trials and tribulations of two extremely rich families – the 'new money' Russell family, whose patriarch George is a ruthless business tycoon and ambitious futurist, and the 'old money' Van Rhijn-Brook family, whose wealth has been inherited over generations and who refuse to accept these new-timey industrialists into their exclusive society. When approached without irony, a show about the rich and royal quibbling over etiquette and reputation can become tiresome quickly (looking at you, The Crown). But by moving the setting from an old country estate in England to the bustling streets of a booming New York, Fellowes presents a world slightly more recognisable to us modern plebs, and therefore ripe for satire. In the reality we live in, where the pettiness and trifles of the obscenely rich are the catalyst for so many of the world's ills, there is a joy in seeing that entitled upper crust confined to their ballrooms and mansions, where their rivalries and game-playing are pure spectacle, rather than likely to bring about the fall of civilisation. It's riveting and hilarious, rather than terrifying and depressing.

Fantastic frustration: Can hype harm a movie's box office?
Fantastic frustration: Can hype harm a movie's box office?

Sydney Morning Herald

time2 days ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Fantastic frustration: Can hype harm a movie's box office?

Consumer resistance is a real and measurable force, Schiffer says. 'For most people, there is a memetic element that drives behaviour, meaning when they see others do it, they want to follow,' he says. 'We're mammals, so we're conditioned this way for survival, when you see certain members of the tribe do certain things, you tend to mimic it.' But others, he says, are outliers and 'will look at mimicked behaviour as a group and want to reject it, they like to go against the pack. But we're talking about subtle things and everyone is different. There's no formula in general. There's a set of underlying forces behind how this works, but it's part science and part art.' Hollywood mathematics is a little complicated, working off the rough algorithm that a film costs it budget again to take to market. That's the cost of marketing: trailers and TV commercials, posters, outdoor advertising, press junkets and promotional activities, distributor fees and the creation of either actual film prints or the digital cinema package (DCP) for cinemas. So, a $US100 million dollar movie needs to make $US200 million to turn a profit, and so on. It is worth noting that the box office number for The Fantastic Four stumbled in sync with another superhero movie, the DC Studios reboot of Superman. In their second weeks, the two films dropped sharply with a 66 per cent and a 53 per cent slide in US domestic ticket sales respectively. That suggests that fatigue with superhero movies in general might also be a cause for concern. And the fatigue is real, Schiffer adds. When broken down in terms of brand, 'what it really means is, predictability. Meaning, you know what you're going to get. And the problem in knowing what you're going to get is good from a trust perspective, but it can be terrible for entertainment,' he says. 'Entertainment is built on the unexpected and surprise and not knowing what you're going to get,' Schiffer says. 'That's a key component of the core of what it means to entertain, which is to grab and hold. Variety and variance and the unexpected, in a franchise, becomes harder and harder to do over time, and that does create fatigue.' The answer is not easy to lock on to, he adds. 'How do you keep it interesting and entertaining without selling out the franchise or taking a risk in alienating the core fans? You saw this with attempts to revisit managing the Star Wars franchise and there was tremendous alienation of the fan base.' Another hurdle for superhero films in general, and Marvel films in particular, is the perception that you need to have watched an extensive library of filmed story to follow what is going on. The fact that The Fantastic Four is the 37th film in the MCU doesn't help that case, though it is important to point out that The Fantastic Four has a separate continuity. (It's a multiverse thing.) But another Marvel film, Thunderbolts, which was released earlier this year, featured characters who had already appeared in several Marvel TV series, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who had appeared in Hawkeye, and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and US Agent (Wyatt Russell), who had appeared on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Loading Thunderbolts pulled a $US382 million box office, off a US$180 million budget. Profitable, but only by a whisker. So, what does a movie marketing department do if the hype turns into a runaway train? Schiffer takes no prisoners on that issue. There are no runaway trains, he says, and film studios are rarely unable to recalibrate their strategy. 'Because [the studio] has control of the assets and control of the next layer, the next leg of the storytelling,' Schiffer says. 'The way you control that is like an orchestra leader. You're aware of where the heat is, you're aware of the sentiment, you're aware of the audience, and then you pull those layers back as needed.' When hype hit the wall: Four close call case studies John Carter (2012) Budget: US$307 million. Box office: US$284 million. Why it should have been a hit: A young-skewing action film. The big sell: The film was based on books by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. What went wrong: A confusing title, bad trailers and the lack of a star in the lead. The Lone Ranger (2013) Budget: US$250 million. Box office: US$260 million. Why it should have been a hit: A classic American story with an A-list cast. The big sell: Pre-scandal Armie Hammer and Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp. What went wrong: A budget blowout and marketing hype that the film couldn't deliver on. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Budget: US$185 million. Box office: US$277 million. Why it should have been a hit: A blue-chip franchise with A-list stars. The big sell: Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling. What went wrong: The pre-release marketing was too generic, and the film was saddled with an R-rating The Flash (2023) Budget: US$220 million Box office: US$271 million Why it should have been a hit: A broad-appeal superhero movie surfing off a popular franchise. The big sell: Ezra Miller as The Flash, plus a cameo from Michael Keaton's Batman. What went wrong: Too much hype. It was 'the best superhero movie I've ever seen,' according to the Warner Bros CEO, plus behavioural issues with the film's star.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store