Latest news with #Firebug
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Smoke' Review: Jurnee Smollett and Taron Egerton Lead Apple TV+'s Flawed but Fascinating Firefighting Mystery
I'm sure I have, at some point, referred to Jurnee Smollett as a 'fiery' actress. The Lovecraft Country and Friday Night Lights star does wild-eyed, fierce intensity in a way that is both captivating and reliable. But this is getting a bit ridiculous. More from The Hollywood Reporter Why Seth Rogen Wants Vin Diesel to Join 'The Studio' Season 2 As Shoppers Cut Back on Spending, Live TV Streaming Services Aim to Attract Subscribers with No-Contract Deals Laura Day Predicts the Future for A-List Stars and Fortune 500 Firms, Just Don't Call Her a Psychic Smollett got to stand just on the outside of the unconvincing climactic CGI fire in last year's otherwise exceptional feature, The Order. Before that, she acted opposite burning crosses (Lovecraft Country) and torches (Underground). Now she gets full inferno immersion in Apple TV+'s new drama series, Smoke, an extraordinarily well-acted, formally inconsistent adaptation of the podcast Firebug. At nine episodes, the Dennis Lehane-created show is too long and frustratingly repetitive, but it unfurls a fascinating mystery, features one of the summer's best ensemble casts and floats big ideas that don't always come through cleanly in the execution. Smollett plays Michelle Calderon, detective in a Pacific Northwest police force. Burnt (metaphorically, not literally) by a recently ended affair with her boss (Rafe Spall's Steven Burk), and still burnt (emotionally, not literally) by a fire started by her mother when she was a kid, Michelle is assigned to partner with arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton). Dave, a former firefighter, needs the help, because there are two serial arsonists — called the Divide & Conquer arsonist and the Milk Jug arsonist — active in the city, and his kindly boss, Greg Kinnear's Harvey Englehart, is getting impatient. Getting slowly impatient, mind you, because the D&C arsonist has apparently already set 200+ fires and irritation is only beginning to set in. Folks care a bit less about the Milk Jug arsonist, who has been preying on the city's lower-income neighborhood, though we're quickly introduced to a suspect: a sad-eyed, mumbly fast-food worker named Freddy (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). Kept busy with the two arsonists, the new partner and a precarious marriage to Hannah Emily Anderson's Ashley, Dave does what any sensible person would do: He starts to write a book about an arson investigator with a new partner chasing a serial arsonist. Soon, both Dave and Michelle's obsessions escalate and games of cat-and-mouse ensue. It's a series packed with twists, including an initial reveal that's really the whole premise of the podcast and series. Chances are pretty good that you'll figure this twist out well before it's formally unveiled, at least an episode later than might have been ideal. There's a breathless later twist that isn't exactly 'guessable' and a key final twist that the series doesn't execute in visual terms as well as it should. Yes, I'm being vague here, but the truth is that Smoke works not because it's surprising, but because it's pleasurable watching these characters' respective wheels spin. Due to the presence of Lehane, Egerton and Kinnear, Smoke is likely to be compared to 2022's very solid limited series Black Bird, which won a well-deserved Emmy for Paul Walter Hauser. The Apple TV+ show that Smoke ultimately has more in common with is Alfonso Cuaron's Disclaimer, an exploration of what happens when we attempt to narrativize real life — and impose the binary of hero/villain onto complex human behavior — masquerading as a revenge drama. Smoke is all about definition and self-definition, which you'll probably figure out from the choice to begin each episode with the definition of various not-difficult-to define words like 'creativity,' which is 'bringing something into existence; producing through imaginative skill.' Michelle is being defined by outside factors, be it the criminal acts of her mother, the power of the man she's sleeping with, or — because of various bigots in her own profession — her race and gender. Dave doesn't even have those elements to define him. His backstory is seemingly sad, but vague. His achievements at his job are negligible, his success in marriage is limited. But as he attempts to write himself as the hero of his own story, he sees a path to glory or possibly notoriety. The hard-boiled narration from Dave's book — 'Fire doesn't give a fuck about your wallet or the size of your gun or the size of the dick you wish was the size of your gun.' — steers a story that consciously keeps viewers aware that it's… well… a story, at a fictional remove from a nonfiction podcast. Even its location is imaginary, an omnibus Pacific Northwest setting with Vancouver playing a state that's amalgamated as 'Orrington' on license plates and legal documents. 'Orrington,' a not-so-subtle portmanteau, is one of those Everyplace/No Place settings in the vein of whatever-sunless-locale-Seven-takes-place-in. Like several key details of Dave's character in particular, the location draws attention to the artificiality of the story being told, even as curious viewers can go online and find actual documentation of the podcast's real-life basis. The performances are split between naturalistic and attuned to heightened genre conventions. Egerton, for reasons that will quickly be obvious, has the most complicated task, swinging from grounded and good-natured to edgier oddness that has an unsettling resemblance to vintage Christian Slater. Dave never quite projects as an 'actual' person and this is a performance that could only work in a show with this sort of self-conscious approach. Here, it functions perfectly, especially opposite Smollett, who digs deep to find the pained center of a woman trying to reshape herself physically — especially in the first episode, she's putting in a lot of workout time — and professionally. Put Kinnear in the understated category, quietly heartbreaking as one of several men whose commitment to work has come at the expense of his ordinary humanity, while Spall aggressively swings between likably decent and repugnant, seemingly more for narrative than logical reasons. The cast gets a huge boost at midseason with the arrival of John Leguizamo, equally broadly funny and vulnerable as Dave's disgraced former partner, and Anna Chlumsky, hilariously scornful as a law enforcement outsider who gets brought into the story's chaos. Special praise is due to Mwine, who may give the show's best performance. There are aspects of Freddy's character — a victim of the foster system with a variety of unspecified social difficulties — that feel right on the verge of several stereotypes. But Mwine conveys a lost, angry and fundamentally lonely man so hauntingly that I frequently wished that Lehane and company gave him more to do. There are stretches, especially in the season's second half, where Smoke starts directly stating and then repeating its themes in ways that both spoil at least one twist and often made me wonder if those underlined points had actually been illustrated or justified by the show. Those were the moments that suggest Smoke might have been improved with a six-episode season, or nine episodes with less redundancy and more room to delve into this fictional city's economic inequalities and the challenges of modern firefighting. It's notable that even though I'm a resident of a Los Angeles still reeling from the city's January fires, up until the finale very little in Smoke made me reflect on those fires. That's further evidence of the show being at once real and yet insulated or isolated from reality. When you have a story this twisty, with dialogue as sturdy as Lehane tends to deliver and stars like the fiery Smollett, such limitations tend not to doom even an imperfect show. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Smoke' showrunner reveals why he dropped that major twist in Apple TV Plus' new true crime thriller
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Apple TV Plus just dropped the first two episodes of "Smoke," its new true crime thriller starring Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett, this morning. So there's a good chance you haven't seen it yet. If you haven't, then be warned — there are spoilers ahead. But if you have seen the two-episode premiere or listened to "Firebug," the true crime podcast this show is loosely adapted from, then you know the shocking reveal from the end of episode 2: Taron Egerton's character, David Gudsen, is an arson investigator who is also a serial arsonist. To be fair, the show's official trailer doesn't entirely hide this. It avoids showing the reveal directly, but it's clear that Detective Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) thinks her new partner could be a prolific arsonist. So when I had a chance to sit down with showrunner Dennis Lehane ("The Wire," "Black Bird") to discuss the true crime limited series, I asked him about the choice to drop what would normally be a major reveal so early on in the show. For his part, Lehane simply doesn't want to deceive audiences just for the sake of shock value. Especially when, if you've already listened to "Firebug" anyway, you know who the arsonist in "Smoke" is likely to be. We tried the third episode. We tried the second. We tried the first. And second just worked. Because it's not about the twist at all. It's about how deep does this rabbit hole of this guy's mind go, and what are we going to find at the end of it? "Smoke" showrunner Dennis Lehane "Audiences are so smart now, man," Lehane rightly pointed out. "I hate shows when I'm sitting there, and I figured it out — I figure [it] out in episode 2, and you're telling me in episode 6? It's annoying." However, that doesn't mean that the plan was always to go with a reveal at the end of the two-episode premiere. In fact, Lehane and the show's creative team tried multiple options. "We tried the third episode. We tried the second. We tried the first. And second just worked. Because it's not about the twist at all. It's about how deep does this rabbit hole of this guy's mind go, and what are we going to find at the end of it?" As someone who has seen "Smoke" and certainly thinks there are more than a few missteps in the miniseries' nine-episode run, I have to agree with the decision to go with a reveal at the end of episode 2. For starters, any further really would feel like the show is just dragging it out. But given the premiere's two-episode structure, it also leaves you on a high note. You walk away from the episode desperate to see what's next now that you know the cat-and-mouse game between Calderone and Gudsen is afoot. As I've already mentioned on more than one occasion, "Smoke" is a true crime thriller miniseries based on the true crime podcast "Firebug." That podcast examined the life and crimes of John Leonard Orr, one of the most prolific arsonists in history. In this show, showrunner Dennis Lehane has opted for a fictional stand-in, Pacific Northwest arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton). Along with Detective Michell Calderone (Jurnee Smollett), he's part of a team chasing down a pair of serial arsonists. But as you now know, one of the people they're chasing is really Gudsen, and the show is, to quote Lehane, "not about the twist at all." Instead, this show is a deep dive into the mind of more than a few twisted individuals as they investigate a spate of arson cases that lead to more than a few deaths. Stream the first two episodes of "Smoke" on Apple TV Plus now 'The Life of Chuck' star discusses screening film with director Mike Flanagan, his favorite performances from the Stephen King adaptation and more I just saw one of my favorite movies in theaters for its 40th anniversary — but you can stream it for free right now Tom Hardy's 'MobLand' just wrapped up with a stunning finale — and I can't wait for a season 2
South China Morning Post
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Smoke's Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett and Dennis Lehane on the new Apple TV+ series
American author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane has a healthy respect for the power of fire. He learned that from surviving a house fire in Boston, Massachusetts, in his thirties. Advertisement Lehane was living on the top floor of a block of flats when a propane tank on the roof exploded and started a blaze. The landlord was replacing the building's smoke detectors at the time, so they were not working. Lehane is lucky to be alive and he credits, in part, the flames. 'If you're trapped in fire – if you wake up and the building you're in is on fire – it's up to the fire at that point. It's really up to the whims of the fire, whatever's going to happen to you. And I find that lack of control fascinating.' Lehane, whose literary canon includes the novels-turned-film-hits Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River, has turned to fire for his latest project – Apple TV+'s new nine-episode crime drama Smoke. It is based on the true story of a former arson investigator who was convicted in 1998 of serial arson. He was captured in part after he wrote a novel about a firefighter who was a serial arsonist. The case – chronicled in the 2021 podcast Firebug – sparked something in Lehane.
Japan Today
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Arson ignites the Dennis Lehane-created Apple TV+ firebug series 'Smoke'
By MARK KENNEDY Author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane has a healthy respect for the power of fire. He learned that the hard way — surviving a house fire in Boston in his 30s. Lehane was living on the top floor of an apartment building when a propane tank on the roof exploded and started a blaze. The landlord was replacing the building's smoke detectors at the time so none were working. Lehane is lucky to be alive and he credits, in part, the flames. 'If you're trapped in fire — if you wake up and the building you're in is on fire — it's up to the fire at that point. It's really up to whims of the fire, whatever's going to happen to you. And I find that lack of control fascinating.' Lehane, whose literary canon includes the novels-turned-movie hits 'Gone, Baby, Gone' and 'Mystic River,' has turned to fire for his latest project — Apple TV+'s new nine-episode crime drama 'Smoke.' It debuts Friday. It's based on the true story of a former arson investigator who was convicted in 1998 of serial arson, captured in part after he wrote a novel about a firefighter who was a serial arsonist. The case — chronicled in the 2021 podcast Firebug — sparked something in Lehane. 'I just thought, that's just the height of craziness. Like, you're not only in denial about who you are, you're so far in denial you're going to write a book about what a great guy you are and then use the fires that you set as the models for the fires in your book?' he says. 'I can get in the zip code of that mindset; I cannot land on the street, though." The show marks a reunion between Lehane, Greg Kinnear and Taron Egerton, who previously worked together on the 2022 Apple TV+ series "Black Bird." It also stars Jurnee Smollett, Anna Chlumsky and John Leguizamo, and boasts an original, eerie song by Radiohead's Thom Yorke called 'Dialing In.' Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, an arson investigator in Umberland, a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest, who is chasing two separate firebugs. He's teamed up with a smart but troubled detective played by Smollett, who begin a game of cat and mouse. If the setup sounds like it leads to a typical TV procedural, viewers who stick around get rewarded by a show that gets weirder and more complex, infused by Lehane's attraction to moral ambiguity. 'We walk with contradictions and I think that's the dramatic irony that Dennis is exploring.' says Smollett. 'These people are saying they're fighting to do the right thing and yet they're morally questionable. I think that's very relevant today.' Edgerton's Dave, it's soon clear, is not who he appears to be and has an almost superhuman ability to compartmentalize aspects of his personal and private lives. He is both bombastic and insecure, goofy and frightening. 'Taron has endless reservoirs of talent to draw on. He's an extremely inspired actor,' says Lehane. 'He comes at it from the same place I come at it, which is Taron won't take a role unless some part of it scares him. I won't tell a story unless some of it scares me." Egerton said he relished a chance to show a different side of himself, rebelling a little at his safe, good-guy public persona after the success of his heroic turn in 2024's 'Carry-On.' 'You know what? I'm not that affable. I am sometimes, but I'm not some of the time,' he says, laughing. 'I think the thing I love about Dave is there is a tension between what the perception of him is and who he really is. And how can you ever really know who a person is?' Adding to the series' allure is some of Lehane's street poetry, like the line: 'Whatever you do, whatever you know, however much lifetime wisdom you've accrued, fire puts a lie to it all.' Smollett was onboard after an initial conversation with Lehane in which he said: 'So many of us say we want to be happy and yet we are drawn to the very thing that will destroy us.' That was Smollett's entry point to her gloriously messy character. Smollett's detective, a former Marine, refuses to be vulnerable, is excellent at her job, traumatized by a past experience with arson and not afraid to mess with anyone. Early on, she is shown using a sledgehammer to her own home. 'She plays with fire,' says Smollett. 'She's living on the edge and has this mask and this guard up and walks around as if she's invincible because she's really just afraid." Lehane says with 'Smoke' he's drawn to people who invest in a narrative of who they choose to be rather than be true to who they really are. 'You don't know who they are because they don't know who they are,' he says. 'They're running from themselves, they're running from their true selves. And I felt like that's the interesting story here I'm trying to tell.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Los Angeles Times
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The true story behind ‘Smoke,' plus ‘Odd Mom Out' and ‘Pavements' for your weekend streaming
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who can't stand the heat outside, but can tolerate it onscreen. The eerie and bizarre story of John Orr, a Southern California arson investigator who authorities say moonlighted as a serial arsonist suspected of setting some 2,000 fires in the 1980s and 1990s, has been chronicled in the 2021 podcast 'Firebug' and, earlier this year, received the deep-dive treatment from L.A. Times writer Christopher Goffard. Now, there's a new Apple TV+ series, 'Smoke,' loosely inspired by the true crime case. Author and screenwriter Dennis Lehane, who created the new drama, stopped by Guest Spot to discuss it. Also in this week's Screen Gab, TV critic Robert Lloyd reminds us that Bravo used to dabble in scripted programming, recommending 'Odd Mom Out,' the short-lived comedy about a stay-at-home mother and her experiences navigating the bizarre and outrageous world of Manhattan's elite; and film reporter Josh Rottenberg suggests finding time to watch a hybrid documentary-biopic film about the '90s indie band Pavement. Must-read stories you might have missed The movie business isn't going to collapse. Jerry Bruckheimer explains why: Thirty-five years after 'Days of Thunder,' the hard-charging 'F1' producer is not slowing down: Bruckheimer talks fast cars, big-budget spectacle and the state of Hollywood. 'My Mom Jayne' led Mariska Hargitay to see her mother 'like a superhero': The 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' actor created an emotional and revealing documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield, who died when Hargitay was just 3 years old. 'The Bear': Apologies and reconciliations lift the mood in Season 4: The latest season of 'The Bear' shows Carmy and the crew reacting to various obstacles, including a negative restaurant review, but everyone's on the road to happiness. 'Countdown' makes Los Angeles a prominent character — and it's in danger: The Prime Video action series follows a task force consisting of members from various law enforcement agencies that are brought together after the murder of a Department of Homeland Security agent. But it's Los Angeles that is in serious danger. Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times 'Odd Mom Out' (Peacock) In my review of the new season of 'The Bear' this week, I neglected to mention Abby Elliott, who plays Sugar, the level-headed sister of Jeremy Allen White's Carmy (or to mention Sugar's new baby, the most adorable infant I have ever seen on screen); ironically, it was because, laboring to express how great she is in it, I had set that bit aside — as it turned out, permanently. Happily, I was already planning to use this space to recommend her earlier series, Jill Kargman's very funny 'Odd Mom Out,' Bravo's brief experiment (2015-17) in scripted comedy, giving me this chance to self-correct. In 'Mom,' whose three seasons stream on Peacock, Kargman, a very talented amateur, stars as a version of herself in a series based on her 2007 book 'Momzillas,' about competitive parenting among Upper East Side New Yorkers, a war her boho-punk mother of three character declines to enter. (She is what most of us would call rich, but not obscenely so, and has good values.) Elliott, in a whimsical comic turn, plays Brooke, the pregnant and thin wife (later ex-wife) of her brother-in-law, whose charities include providing 'prophylactic gastric bypasses for at-risk kids with morbidly obese parents' and sending bouncy castles to Africa. — Robert Lloyd 'Pavements' (available on various VOD platforms) If you were young and vaguely disaffected in the '90s, Pavement was either your favorite band or the band your favorite band wanted to be — a group whose slanted (and enchanted) songs defined slacker cool, mixing lo-fi chaos, shaggy pop hooks and a shrugging disinterest in 'career, career, career,' as they put it in their semi-hit 'Cut Your Hair.' So it's only fitting that Alex Ross Perry's drolly funny anti-rock-doc ditches the usual mythology-building formula in favor of something far weirder. Blending real tour footage, a faux biopic, a tongue-in-cheek jukebox musical and a museum filled with half-fake relics, the film is part tribute, part Gen X time capsule, part absurdist prank. 'Stranger Things' star Joe Keery is the film's unexpected MVP, playing himself with deadpan commitment as he fixates on nailing lead singer Stephen Malkmus' Stockton accent — right down to requesting a photo of his tongue for research. By the end, 'Pavements' becomes both a joke about the band's legacy and a surprisingly sincere celebration of it. — Josh Rottenberg A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they're working on — and what they're watching He spent his days as a fire captain and arson investigator in Southern California, but authorities say John Orr lived a secret life as a prolific arsonist responsible for a string of fires that terrorized the region in the '80s and '90s. An unpublished novel he wrote, 'Points of Origin,' detailed an arson spree that mirrored real-life incidents and helped authorities secure enough evidence to arrest him. The firefighting veteran was eventually convicted on 20 counts of arson and 4 counts of murder and is serving life in prison. Orr continues to maintain his innocence. This true story, chronicled in the 2021 podcast 'Firebug,' is the basis for Apple TV+'s new nine-episode crime drama 'Smoke.' Created by Dennis Lehane ('Black Bird'), the series follows arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) and Detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) as they pursue two serial arsonists. The first two episodes are available to stream, with the remaining seven releasing weekly every Friday until Aug. 15. Lehane stopped by Guest Spot to discuss the show's gnarly fire sequences and getting Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke to provide the show's theme song. — Yvonne Villarreal You've authored several well-known novels, including 'Gone, Baby, Gone,' 'Mystic River' and 'Shutter Island,' and you're familiar with exploring moral ambiguity. What stood out to you when you first listened to 'Firebug'? And what about it made it a story you wanted to tell for the screen? What really stood out for me with 'Firebug' was John Orr's myopic duality. He clung to the identity of a hero arson investigator even as he was running around lighting up Glendale and surrounding areas, resulting in several deaths. On top of that, he was writing a book about an arson investigator chasing a serial arsonist. And the book was quite bad. I found that kinda delicious. I was also intrigued by his methods for setting the fires and was taken by the fact that he'd once nearly died in a fire when he mistook his reflection for another firefighter and ran deeper into a burning house. Everything else in the show is pure fiction. I didn't want to tell a story about John Orr in 1980s California; I wanted to tell a story about our culture now, about people who feel so unmoored they'd rather cling to the fiction of themselves over the fact. Tell me about the planning and work that went into crafting the fire sequences in the series — how you decided when to use special effects or real fire, and the precautions that needed to be in place for the latter. And is there a fire sequence in the series that stands out for you? The moments that stand out most are the first fire — Dave's dream — and the last — the sawmill fire. The first of these was 100% real. It was shot on a burn stage with pipes blasting flame all around the room as Taron — not a stunt man — walked through it. It looks so impressive because a) we planned really hard; and b) Sam McCurdy, our director of photography, is a painter with light and reflection. Our sawmill fire and the subsequent car ride thru the burning forest was the opposite — it was predominantly CGI, but we'd realized by then that the key was to shoot as much real fire as we could (which, in this case, wasn't terribly much), so the CGI wizards had real flame to compare their work to. How did you get Thom Yorke to write a song ('Dialing In') for the show's theme? Our music supervisor, Mary Ramos, had heard that Thom was a fan of 'Black Bird' [Lehane's previous Apple TV+ series that also starred Egerton and featured much of the same creative team]. We reached out to see if he had any interest in writing a song for our credit sequence. And he actually called us back. He and I spoke about the underlying themes of the show and he read a bunch of the scripts. Then he went off and wrote the song. He sent it back to us and someone, I think it was Mary, said, 'Now you have to give him notes.' And I was like, Um … no, no, I don't. He's Thom Yorke. Giving him notes on music would be like telling Scorsese where to put the camera. I passed along this note:'Thank you.' What have you watched recently that you're recommending to everyone you know? (Please explain) 'Dept. Q' [Netflix]. Scott Frank, as always, crushes it as both a writer and a director. It's got one of the best pilots I've ever seen, and the cast, led by Matthew Goode and Kate Dickie, is impeccable. It's so rich in character and atmosphere that I wanted to fly to Edinburgh to simply hang out with every character after I finished watching. What's your go-to comfort watch, the film or TV show you return to again and again? (Please explain) 'Midnight Run' [Netflix] is my cinematic chicken soup for the soul. It's smart, hilarious, infinitely quotable, sports one of the greatest casts ever assembled, and it's non-stop, breakneck fun from the first shot to the last. I've probably seen it 30 times.
