The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
featuring Joel Johnstone, FCLC ’01—and the Rose Hill campus

After five celebrated seasons, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has come to an end. The fan-favorite comedy about a rule-breaking 1950s housewife turned raucous comedian featured Rachel Brosnahan as the title character, Miriam “Midge” Maisel, and Michael Zegen as her soon-to-be-ex-husband Joel, vice president of a plastics company and an aspiring comedian. Fordham’s own Joel Johnstone, FCLC ’01, starred as Archie Cleary, who, along with his wife Imogene, is one of the couple’s best friends. Johnstone aside, the cast and crew were no strangers to Fordham, having filmed at the Rose Hill campus a couple of times. In fact, if you look closely at episode eight of the final season, you’ll notice something familiar in the background: Cunniffe Fountain and Edwards Parade (see above). In this episode, in which Fordham provides the setting for Midge’s college reunion, the characters engage in a lot of self-reflection, illustrated with some throwback clips, and Midge’s dad, Abraham (Tony Shalhoub), finally comes to appreciate the women in his life. Mrs. Maisel is far from the only production to be drawn to Rose Hill’s idyllic beauty. Since the 1940s, dozens of TV shows and films have been shot, in part, at Fordham—including 2015’s True Story, which starred James Franco, Jonah Hill, and Felicity Jones, and featured Fordham Theatre grad Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08, in a supporting role.
—Sierra McCleary-Harris

Can You Dig It?
co-created and executive produced by Bryan Master, FCRH ’99

This past August marked the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, and media outlets across the world have been looking back at the early days of the culture. In this audio series, though, the focus is on events that led to the birth of hip-hop—ones that took place not far from Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. Co-created by Bryan Master, FCRH ’99, and narrated by legendary Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, Can You Dig It? chronicles the 1971 gang peace treaty in the Bronx that paved the way for hip-hop. Through scripted scenes and unscripted interviews, it tells the story of the murder of Ghetto Brothers member Cornell “Black Benjie” Benjamin, which resulted in an escalation of violence. That moment of chaos was followed by the Hoe Avenue peace meeting, organized by the Ghetto Brothers’ Benjamin “Yellow Benjy” Melendez, which ushered in an era of relative calm among gangs in the South Bronx. Two years later, on August 11, 1973, with young people in the area safer to socialize across neighborhood boundaries, Cindy Campbell threw a “Back to School Jam” in a recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Her brother, Kool Herc, DJ’d the party, which came to be considered the origin of hip-hop music. For Master, the founder and owner of Sound + Fission, a music and audio production company, the series is a tribute to the peacemakers and an open “love letter to the Bronx.”
—Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08

The Color of Family
a novel by Jerry McGill, FCRH ’92

In his latest novel, Jerry McGill, author of Bed Stuy: A Love Story (2021) and the memoir Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me (2012), shares a portrait of the Paynes, an upper-class, African American family that lives in suburban Connecticut. Despite appearances, the Paynes aren’t quite as happy as people assume, especially when twins from France—the result of one of patriarch Harold Payne’s extramarital affairs—arrive on the family’s doorstep. One fateful night, brothers Devon and James are in a car accident that leaves Devon paralyzed. James eventually goes off to college and excels at football, the sport they both loved. When Devon is moved into a rehabilitation center across the country, the distance between the two brothers— wrought by their explosive, sports-fueled rivalry—is no longer just figurative. Years later, as Devon travels around the world over the course of a decade to visit his seven siblings, he sees how the traumatic accident of his youth has affected—and connected—all of them. They each may have moved on in their own way, but it’s only through forgiveness and by coming to terms with the past that they’ll be able to live freely in the present. Though Devon is at the center of the novel, McGill weaves in diary entries and first-person narratives from the other characters, giving readers a chance to examine the relationships, events, and heartbreaks from multiple perspectives. The novel is less than 300 pages, and that, coupled with the shifting points of view, makes it a great, page-turning read.
—Sierra McCleary-Harris

White Noise
a film based on the novel by Don DeLillo, FCRH ’58

Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise has aged well since it won a National Book Award in 1985. Darkly funny, it parodies academia and captures the media, technology, and consumer culture of the mid-’80s—what one character calls the “incessant bombardment of information,” much of it unreliable. People commune in the supermarket like it’s a kind of church, and when a train crash releases a cloud of chemicals, the “airborne toxic event” leads to sickness, evacuation, and the threat of ecological disaster. The novel is also about the anxieties and wonders of family life (“the cradle of misinformation”) and the fear of death. And now, it’s a smart, funny Netflix film, faithfully adapted and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Driver. Driver plays Jack Gladney, a middle-aged professor of Hitler studies who lives with his fourth wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), and their blended family of four kids. “I’m tentatively scheduled to die,” he tells her, explaining that he’s been exposed to the toxic cloud. She confesses that she has exchanged sex for Dylar, an experimental drug meant to relieve her intense fear of death. How they deal with their fears, their envy and infidelity, is the heart of the film.

—Ryan Stellabotte

Looking for Violet
a podcast by Carmen Borca-Carrillo, FCLC ’20, GSAS ’21

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carmen Borca-Carrillo watched a lot of romantic comedies, or rom-coms, with her partner. “What we both figured out pretty quickly was that there really weren’t many lesbian rom-coms,” she said. That’s how Looking for Violet was born. The four-part podcast was her capstone project in the public media master’s degree program at Fordham. In it, she examines why queer love stories are scarcely told in American film comedies. The podcast earned her multiple honors, including a Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. “We always say representation in media is important, and I hope that [listeners] take away from it a little bit more of the concrete examples of why it’s important,” said Borca-Carrillo, who is now a junior producer at Wonder Media Network, a women-led podcasting company she said is “dedicated to lifting up underrepresented voices.”

—Kelly Prinz, FCRH ’15

All the Women in My Brain
by Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08

In 2016, not long before her breakout, Emmy-nominated role as a wrestler in the Netflix series GLOW, Betty Gilpin returned to the Lincoln Center campus to speak with a group of Fordham Theatre students. She said her own student days in the program continue to motivate her. “Especially as a woman, it’s totally different. You’re going to be told things like, ‘Don’t make that weird face when you cry,’ or, ‘Great, just wear more makeup next time,’” she said. But “what you’ve built here is invaluable. You’ve built this ocean of weird to draw on, to love from, that not everybody has.”

With humor and wit, Gilpin generously shares her “ocean of weird” in this debut essay collection. The title, she writes, is a reference to all the personalities who “take a turn at the wheel” in her brain—some “cowering in sweatpants, some howling plans for revolution.” She skewers the “glossy cringe” of Hollywood and writes about her struggles between ambition and self-doubt. After 15 years as a working actor, she has come to see her experiences as a “perfect allegory for being a woman in this world. Having to cycle through identities to give whoever is in front of you the girl they want.” And she credits the Fordham Theatre program for helping her realize that the craft she chose “wasn’t just sequined escape, it was naked examination.” “Make your demons trade knives for paintbrushes,” she advises young artists. “And like yourself enough to do it out loud.”

—Ryan Stellabotte

Fordham Theatre alumna Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08, has once again been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her portrayal of Debbie Eagan in Netflix’s GLOW. The comedy series from the team behind Orange Is the New Black centers on a crew of misfits in 1980s LA who reinvent themselves as the “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.”

In a recent interview with The New York TImes, Gilpin echoed a sentiment she previously shared with graduating Fordham Theatre students in 2016: Embrace the weird.

“We studied a lot of theater of the absurd at Fordham and ‘building your inner ocean of weird’ was the thesis statement,” she told the Times. “Then graduating and auditioning for things like Gossip Girl, where the No. 1 priority is muffling your ocean of weird and curling your hair, I didn’t work for a while because I was bad at both the muffling and the curling.”

This is the third consecutive year in which Gilpin has been nominated for the award; perhaps this third time will be the charm for “weird.”

Dylan McDermott, FCLC ’83, has been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his portrayal of Ernie—the owner of Golden Tip Gas, a service station that doubles as a high-end brothel—in Netflix’s Hollywood. The Fordham Theatre alumnus was last nominated 21 years ago for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his role as Bobby Donnell in ABC’s The Practice.

In the emotional drama, a group of aspiring actors and filmmakers will do virtually anything to realize their showbiz dreams in post-World War II Hollywood.

In May, McDermott told Town & Country that he drew inspiration from real Hollywood greats, his own imagination, and a documentary on Scotty Bowers, on whom Ernie is based.

“I certainly watched the documentary on Scotty Bowers and got useful information out of that,” he said. “I also used Clark Gable as my muse for this role. So, between the information I had from watching great movies from the 1940s, what was in my own imagination, and what was on the pages of the script, it all came together. That’s the great thing about collaboration, whatever comes out can be magical and I certainly feel that’s happened on this show. There’s nothing like this on television, that’s for damn sure.”

Rounding out the alumni nominees, Seena Vali, FCRH ’10, received two nominations this year. The Last Week Tonight with John Oliver writer—along with a team of writers—is nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song “Eat Sh!t, Bob,” featured on episode 629, and for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series.

Vali, who studied mathematics and music while attending Fordham, previously took home Emmys for Outstanding Writing in a Variety Series in 2018 and 2019.

Tony Award-winning actress Phylicia Rashad, a former Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre at Fordham, has been nominated for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her work on NBC’s This Is Us. Rashad was the first person to hold the Fordham position, established in 2011 thanks to a $2 million gift from Washington, FCLC ’77.

Perhaps best known as “America’s Mom” for her role on The Cosby Show, Rashad portrays Carol “Mamma C” Clarke, mother of Beth Pearson (Susan Kelechi Watson). Referencing a scene the two actresses share, Watson told The Los Angeles Times: “I will say, there’s this amazing moment between when Mamma C and Beth where Beth says to her, ‘I’m strong because of you.’ And in that moment, I felt more of a Susan-Phylicia thing. I’ve always looked up to her path and what she’s gone through and come through as an artist, as a woman … and continuing to go through, because she’s not stopping any time soon.”

This is the second consecutive year that Rashad has been nominated in this category. She previously received Lead Actress nods in 1985, 1986, and 2008.

The 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will air on ABC on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 8 p.m. EST.

NFR!
by Lana Del Rey

Lizzy Grant, FCRH ’08, is better known as Lana Del Rey, her professional moniker as a singer, songwriter, and musician. Del Rey’s sixth album, Norman _______ Rockwell! was released in August 2019 to wide critical acclaim, with The Guardian, NPR, Pitchfork, and others naming it the best album of the year. The record is both personal and outward- looking. Del Rey describes intimate relationships and the increasingly precarious state of the world with the same biting wit and cool, deadpan vocal delivery, all over some of the most lush and intricate melodies she’s ever written. While her early work was sometimes described as “detached” or “ironic,” on NFR! the listener is plugged in to the funny, profound observations of an artist watching the world around her warp at high speed. As she croons on album highlight “The greatest,” “If this is it, I’m signing off … I hope the livestream’s almost on.” —Adam Kaufman

The Hunt
starring Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08

Fordham Theatre alumna Betty Gilpin has had a big couple of years, earning Emmy nominations in 2018 and 2019 for her role as wrestler Liberty Belle in the Netflix series GLOW. But in The Hunt, she takes on what may be her biggest role yet. The film, described by its director and producers as a satire of the left-versus-right divide in American politics, sees Gilpin play Crystal Creasey, one among a group of captives who are kidnapped and hunted for sport. The film attracted a good deal of controversy, and its release was delayed in the wake of mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso, but it is now available on streaming services after a theatrical release in March. “It’s supposed to be a movie that you can [watch with]your family member who you can’t make eye contact with at Thanksgiving and you … laugh at each other and laugh at yourselves,” Gilpin recently told The New York Times. Katie Walsh of Tribune News Service wrote that the movie “is worth the price of admission for [Gilpin’s] performance alone,” and Vulture’s Alison Willmore wrote that Gilpin plays Crystal “with the kind of delectably unflappable timing ’80s action franchises were once built on.” —Adam Kaufman

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century
by Blythe Randolph and John Loughery, FCRH ’75

In his last book, John Loughery focused on Fordham’s founder, Archbishop John Hughes, a key figure in 19th-century U.S. history and tireless advocate for struggling Irish immigrants. In his latest book, co-written with Randolph, he chronicles the life of Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, outspoken pacifist and advocate for the poor, and critic of institutions both left and right. Judging by the reviews, Randolph and Loughery have provided the definitive biography. Writing in The New York Times, Karen Armstrong called it “precise and meticulous” and a “vivid account of her political and religious development.” The authors have revived a “voice for our times,” Samantha Power wrote in The Washington Post, noting Dorothy Day’s stances that have modern-day resonance—her attacks on corporate influence on public policy, her advocacy on behalf of refugees, and her “suspicions of an overzealous federal bureaucracy,” among others. —Chris Gosier

It’s something that Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08, the Fordham Theatre graduate who plays Debbie, might have said herself.

When she was last on the Lincoln Center campus, in April 2016, Gilpin told a group of Fordham Theatre seniors about the struggles of auditioning for acting roles. “Especially as a woman, it’s totally different. You’re going to be told things like, ‘Don’t make that weird face when you cry,’ or, ‘Great, just wear more makeup next time,’” she said. She emphasized how her Fordham training, which created an atmosphere of camaraderie and taught her to focus on her love of the craft, keeps her grounded and motivated.

Now Gilpin stars alongside Alison Brie in the comedy about the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, or GLOW, the short-lived women’s professional wrestling circuit founded in 1986. The New York Times has called the Netflix series, a fictionalized account of 1980s show, “a high-flying leap off the top rope, a summer treat with spandex armor and a pulsating neon heart.”

And Gilpin has been able to share her experiences and advice with a wider audience through magazine interviews, TV appearances, and even an essay in Glamour, where she discusses gaining both confidence and physical strength through her new role.

“GLOW was the first set I’d been on run by women,” Gilpin writes. “It was a magical never-never land run by type-A amazons. I saw power and care together for the first time.”

Season two of GLOW will be released on Netflix on June 29.

In the meantime, watch the trailer to see Gilpin’s character Debbie transform into her wrestling persona—Liberty Belle—about 45 seconds into the GLOW girls’ neon-fueled ’80s dance party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwVOmTImfLA

Jared McNeill, FCLC ’08, knows how important it is for actors to maintain their passion for theater. “A lot of people talk about it as a flame burning in your heart. I always think it’s not a big fire; it’s a tiny candlelight. And there’s a lot of wind out there! You’ve got to know where it’s coming from.”

McNeill started out working small jobs in the New York theater scene. He said the collaborative nature of Fordham’s program, where performance-track students are required to learn design and production skills (and vice versa), helped him get noticed. Now he’s touring the world with Tony- and Emmy award-winning director Peter Brook’s company and spending much of his time in Paris. It’s a path his agent recommended against.

“They’re there to assist you on your road,” McNeill said of his experience with agents, “but they’re not there to tell you how to live your life or do your career.” It was actually Matthew Maguire, director of the Fordham Theatre program, who helped McNeill think through the decision that has ultimately shaped his career.

The panelists, whose conversation was driven entirely by student questions, gave advice about graduate school, discussed working in theater versus television, and shared honest and sometimes-humorous stories about the audition process and the difficulties women and minorities often face in the industry.

Betty Gilpin, FCLC ’08, an actress who had a recurring role on Nurse Jackie with Edie Falco and will soon be seen on CBS’s Elementary, told students how her days at Fordham motivate her even when things get tough. “Especially as a woman, it’s totally different. You’re going to be told things like, ‘Don’t make that weird face when you cry,’ or, ‘Great, just wear more makeup next time,’” she said. “But the Fordham is in you, and that’s important.”

“What you’ve built here is invaluable,” Gilpin said, referring to the theatrical training she received and the bonds she formed at Fordham. “You’ve built this ocean of weird to draw on, to love from, that not everybody has.”

Amirah Vann, FCLC ’02, who also started her career acting in small shows on stage in New York City before landing the part of Ernestine on Underground, WGN America’s new show about the Underground Railroad, stressed that it’s important to “take the work when it comes” and “build relationships,” but to also create your own path. “The clearer your vision of what kind of actor you want to be, what things are important to you, the more [your agent and casting directors] will be on board,” she said.

She also advised students to be assertive on auditions, and to remember that the casting directors don’t always know what they’re looking for. When you’re given a part to read for, she explained, “you’re not trying to solve some problem you’re presented. You know this character. You come in with choices and opinions.”

It’s a little different for Isabelle Simone, FCLC ’12, who has worked as a costume assistant, often with renowned and prolific designer Ann Roth, on Broadway shows like Porgy and Bess, Book of Mormon, and On Your Feet. “I’m creating someone else’s vision,” explained Simone, who emphasized the social nature of the theater business.

“Every job I’ve gotten has been a direct result of the first internship I got from Becky [Bodurtha, the Fordham costume shop supervisor],” she said. It’s just as much about being easy to work with as it is about being talented. “If you’re good, the word gets out. Much of it is about being nice and being a good person.”

John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, who won a Tony Award for his role in The Normal Heart and an Emmy nomination for his starring role on Showtime’s The Big C, agreed. “That behavior does not go unrewarded,” he said.

Hickey also urged seniors not to be discouraged if they don’t get an agent through the Senior Showcase.

“It certainly won’t be the last time somebody says no,” he said. “It’s just the very beginning of your career. Keep trying to learn. Every hard thing teaches you. You just have to keep trying to figure out new ways to keep at it.”

The Senior Showcase is open only to industry professionals, such as agents and managers. But you don’t have to be an industry pro to enjoy this year’s senior class reel below!