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CNN
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘White Lotus' villain Jon Gries likens Greg to Robert Durst and the Tinder Swindler
When Season 3 of 'The White Lotus' premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid. As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya's death and learned that Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities. On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of the actor, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like 'White Lotus' itself, full of twists. 'In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,' Gries said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg's very apparent ill health in the first season of 'White Lotus,' which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: 'When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.' But when he was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, Gries realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a 'comprehensive history' for him on his own. '(White) said, 'I'm writing it right now, and I'm writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you're in, I'll continue writing. If not, I'll stop,'' Gries recalled. Of course, he said yes to coming back to the series, which eventually required him to live in Italy for a few months for filming. During production, White revealed to Gries that Greg is 'very sinister.' That became rather irrefutable by the season's climax, which saw Tanya's demise orchestrated by her now-husband. Come Season 3, Gries had to rewrite Greg's backstory again, this time drawing from some unlikely sources for inspiration, like HBO docuseries 'The Jinx,' about late convicted killer Robert Durst, and the case involving the man who came to be known as the Tinder Swindler. Gries said he was struck by Durst's 'kind of seemingly even keel personality,' which served as a model for where Greg was headed, someone 'who doesn't really show a great deal of emotion, doesn't seem to get too angry, just gets a little bit irritated and is dangerous.' 'There's a bridled rage underneath. And those kind of people I find – at least with respect to Gary, Greg, Gary – fascinating,' he said. And yet, while searching for an empathetic way back to portraying his character, Gries kept wondering if there was anything still redeeming about Greg. An important 'wake up moment' came during a decisive conversation he had with White just before filming in Thailand, in which the show's creator said of Greg, in no uncertain terms: 'He's a psychopath.' 'And that was it. It was like, 'back to the drawing board.' And it really did help me,' Gries said. The penultimate episode of the series will air on Sunday, an evening that thanks to 'Lotus' and other shows has again become a night of appointment viewing amid a general move away from binge watching. Gries said he appreciates the shift. 'We're a society that in a weird way doesn't understand the beauty of waiting. The beauty of the space between the notes,' he shared. 'If I binged ('White Lotus') I'd feel like I just ate too many chocolates. It just wouldn't be the same. You need to process this.' 'The White Lotus' airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, with the episode available to stream on Max. HBO and Max, like CNN, are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
CNN
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘White Lotus' villain Jon Gries likens Greg to Robert Durst and the Tinder Swindler
When Season 3 of 'The White Lotus' premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid. As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya's death and realized Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities. On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of actor Jon Gries, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like 'White Lotus' itself, full of twists. 'In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,' the actor said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg's very apparent ill health in the first season of 'White Lotus,' which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: 'When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.' But when Gries was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, he realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a 'comprehensive history' for him on his own. '(White) said, 'I'm writing it right now, and I'm writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you're in, I'll continue writing. If not, I'll stop,'' Gries recalled. Of course, he said yes to coming back to the series, which eventually required him to live in Italy for a few months for filming. During production, White revealed to Gries that Greg is 'very sinister.' That became rather irrefutable by the season's climax, which saw Tanya's demise orchestrated by her now-husband. Come Season 3, Gries had to rewrite Greg's backstory again, this time drawing from some unlikely sources for inspiration, like HBO docuseries 'The Jinx,' about late convicted killer Robert Durst, and the case involving the man who came to be known as the Tinder Swindler. Gries said he was struck by Durst's 'kind of seemingly even keel personality,' which served as a model for where Greg was headed, someone 'who doesn't really show a great deal of emotion, doesn't seem to get too angry, just gets a little bit irritated and is dangerous.' 'There's a bridled rage underneath. And those kind of people I find – at least with respect to Gary, Greg, Gary – fascinating,' he said. And yet, while searching for an empathetic way back to portraying his character, Gries kept wondering if there was anything still redeeming about Greg. An important 'wake up moment' came during a decisive conversation he had with White just before filming in Thailand, in which the show's creator said of Greg, in no uncertain terms: 'He's a psychopath.' 'And that was it. It was like, 'back to the drawing board.' And it really did help me,' Gries said. The penultimate episode of the series will air on Sunday, an evening that thanks to 'Lotus' and other shows has again become a night of appointment viewing amid a general move away from binge watching. Gries said he appreciates the shift. 'We're a society that in a weird way doesn't understand the beauty of waiting. The beauty of the space between the notes,' he shared. 'If I binged ('White Lotus') I'd feel like I just ate too many chocolates. It just wouldn't be the same. You need to process this.' 'The White Lotus' airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, with the episode available to stream on Max. HBO and Max, like CNN, are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
CNN
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
‘White Lotus' villain Jon Gries likens Greg to Robert Durst and the Tinder Swindler
When Season 3 of 'The White Lotus' premiered last month, the shock was palpable when returning character Belinda recognized a familiar face at the resort in Thailand: Greg Hunt, the wily suitor of the late Tanya McQuoid. As the season has unfolded, Greg (played by Jon Gries) has emerged as an antagonist, particularly after Belinda dove into the investigation surrounding Tanya's death and realized Greg, who now goes by Gary, evaded questioning by authorities. On a show famous for reinventing itself, the same has been asked of actor Jon Gries, who says that playing the ever-shifting character has been a welcome challenge and, like 'White Lotus' itself, full of twists. 'In the beginning, I totally played him for a guy who was, you know, on his last legs,' the actor said in a recent interview with CNN, referencing Greg's very apparent ill health in the first season of 'White Lotus,' which premiered to rave reviews in summer 2021. He added: 'When you play a character, you want to find his empathetic side, and you want to understand where they came from, and what got them to where they are.' But when Gries was contacted by creator Mike White about appearing in Season 2, he realized he would have to adjust his framing of Greg, despite having previously imagined a 'comprehensive history' for him on his own. '(White) said, 'I'm writing it right now, and I'm writing you, and I just need to know here and now: If you're in, I'll continue writing. If not, I'll stop,'' Gries recalled. Of course, he said yes to coming back to the series, which eventually required him to live in Italy for a few months for filming. During production, White revealed to Gries that Greg is 'very sinister.' That became rather irrefutable by the season's climax, which saw Tanya's demise orchestrated by her now-husband. Come Season 3, Gries had to rewrite Greg's backstory again, this time drawing from some unlikely sources for inspiration, like HBO docuseries 'The Jinx,' about late convicted killer Robert Durst, and the case involving the man who came to be known as the Tinder Swindler. Gries said he was struck by Durst's 'kind of seemingly even keel personality,' which served as a model for where Greg was headed, someone 'who doesn't really show a great deal of emotion, doesn't seem to get too angry, just gets a little bit irritated and is dangerous.' 'There's a bridled rage underneath. And those kind of people I find – at least with respect to Gary, Greg, Gary – fascinating,' he said. And yet, while searching for an empathetic way back to portraying his character, Gries kept wondering if there was anything still redeeming about Greg. An important 'wake up moment' came during a decisive conversation he had with White just before filming in Thailand, in which the show's creator said of Greg, in no uncertain terms: 'He's a psychopath.' 'And that was it. It was like, 'back to the drawing board.' And it really did help me,' Gries said. The penultimate episode of the series will air on Sunday, an evening that thanks to 'Lotus' and other shows has again become a night of appointment viewing amid a general move away from binge watching. Gries said he appreciates the shift. 'We're a society that in a weird way doesn't understand the beauty of waiting. The beauty of the space between the notes,' he shared. 'If I binged ('White Lotus') I'd feel like I just ate too many chocolates. It just wouldn't be the same. You need to process this.' 'The White Lotus' airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, with the episode available to stream on Max. HBO and Max, like CNN, are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Zodiac Killer Project' Review: Netflix True Crime Found Dead in a Ditch
'Zodiac Killer Project,' the fascinating feature documentary from director Charlie Shackleton, is nothing like what it sounds. For one thing, it's not really about the infamous Zodiac Killer — though neither really was the David Fincher film either. Instead, both are about something much better and wholly unexpected. Following Shackleton's failed attempt to make a movie about a man who suspected he knew who the actual Zodiac Killer was, this doc is just as good as Fincher's film in how it cuts to the core of something deeper while remaining a vision all its own. The failure that set the film in motion was due to a rights issue, but Shackleton had already planned out how he would have made his movie. So, not to let that go to waste, he decides to show us, taking us meticulously through, almost beat by beat, what this would have looked like. The result is a film that's not just funny, skewering so much of the lazy yet still effective tropes of so much of true crime, but also a wake-up call for the genre. This all opens with footage of one of the locations that would have begun this story. With Shackleton narrating over what looks like any other nondescript parking lot, we hear of an encounter between two men where one of them believes that the other certainly looks like the Zodiac Killer. This plays like a thriller where you can hear the excitement creeping into the director's voice before he explains that this will now never be something he can depict how he intended. His original vision is now merely an unrealized dream, but this is infinitely more interesting anyway. 'Zodiac Killer Project' then becomes a experimental meditation on the often unspoken challenges of filmmaking, the pain that comes from a project falling apart after you spent so much time on it, whether one can really have true integrity in one's art, and, most centrally, a deconstruction of the cinematic language of true crime. This is something Shackleton has a deep understanding of and demonstrates for us in delightful detail. The film shifts into being a work of criticism in its own right by becoming something of a video essay where we see just how much of the sludge of shallow true crime content falls back on the same old tricks. Seeing all the examples of trickery, manipulation, and just straight-up laziness cut together, taking big-name titles from Netflix's 'Making a Murderer' to HBO's 'The Jinx' to task, is as entertaining as it is sharp. It is in Shackleton's withering breakdowns that we begin to see how easily true crime projects can become bankrupt creative endeavors. At the same time, the director does not let himself off the hook. If anything, he is indicting his own work as part of this, frankly sharing how he too would have used these very same tricks if he had the chance. The frankness with how all this is presented and how he speaks about it makes the documentary an enthralling one, even as you're primarily just hearing someone talk. It's like we're being given some sort of secret code that, once you see it, will forever change how you look at all these projects. This turns it into not just a film that is built for our moment, where the inundation of true crime is reaching a breaking point, but one that throws down the gauntlet for filmmakers to be more thoughtful in how they go about making these works. It's something that will resonate most with fans of true crime films and shows. This extends to one of the most surprising and hilarious endings of any film that showed at Sundance this year. It's abrupt and yet still precisely pointed, providing one more lasting impression that you won't be able to shake. It cements Shackleton's film as not just one of the most fascinating achievements of the form in recent memory, but a work that has the potential to rewire our very brains free from the malaise of true crime manipulation in the air. 'Zodiac Killer Project' is a sales title at Sundance. Check out all our Sundance coverage here The post 'Zodiac Killer Project' Review: Netflix True Crime Found Dead in a Ditch appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Alabama Solution,' documentary chronicling the horrific conditions inside the state's prison system, premieres at Sundance
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — A new documentary from the team behind the true crime phenomenon 'The Jinx' will explore life in Alabama's prison system. 'The Alabama Solution,' a documentary from filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be available on HBO later this year. Jarecki is known for the true crime series 'The Jinx' involving wealthy eccentric Robert Durst and the different murders he is accused of over the years. The series was historic in that it seemingly captured Durst's confession to one of the murders. Kaufman served as a producer on 'The Jinx' and was also involved in 'The Innocence Files.' The film includes interview with inmates in some of Alabama's prisons, but the real revelations come in cell phone footage secretly recorded by the inmates of what truly goes on behind bars. 'You rarely get the opportunity to go into a prison facility in Alabama and I think we saw this great opportunity to speak with some of the men, to just observe what we could around the facility, to learn what we could, but very quickly, it became clear that there are only certain conversations that we were allowed to have,' Kaufman said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Kaufman said this secrecy around the Alabama Department of Corrections gave her and Jarecki the drive to keep pursuing the project over five years. 'That's why prisons are so secret, that's why we're not allowed to see in and we can only read papers about what is actually happening because when you do see it, it becomes less tolerable,' she said. In the interview with the Times, Jarecki said it was important to capture the stories of inmates who have been trying to get the word out for years about the substandard conditions inside these prisons, but also make sure they were protected. 'These are men who have been working on their own for many years to get the word out on the crisis in this prison system, so when we first started talking, they were very clear that we were part of their agenda, in a way,' Jarecki said. 'It was very important for them to do this work, so we were kind of there to ride along, so it was a symbiotic process.' Jarecki said he would've liked to interview Gov. Kay Ivey, who did not participate in the film. A $1 billion prison in Elmore that was partially funded through COVID-19 relief funds will be named after her. 'My first question would be to try to really understand how insulated she must be from what's happening to her own citizens of her own state to keep proposing solutions that are not solutions,' he said. Reviews of the film so far have been glowing. ''The Alabama Solution' is difficult to watch, and impossible to watch without escalating anger,' Daniel Feinberg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. 'There isn't easy catharsis or an easy non-Alabama solution, but it's impossible to deny that something better must be done.' No release date has been announced yet. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
