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denimbex1986 · 2 months

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'Andrew Scott felt no fear when the script for All of Us Strangers first came his way—a little surprising given that he saw everything the project would demand of him then and there. “I immediately knew that I would have to go to a childish place within myself, a place that I feel like I’ve escaped from—which is a place of real loneliness,” he says on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen to the full interview below). “There was something I saw in the role that I understood immediately.”

Fast-forward to more than a year later, when Scott, after both wrapping production and enduring a SAG-AFTRA strike that delayed his ability to promote the movie, finally sat in his first public screening of the film in Los Angeles. “I felt like I was sitting naked in a room of 350 people,” he says with a laugh. “I know there’s a certain degree of nakedness in the movie anyway—physical nakedness—but I was kind of alarmed by how raw it felt.” He then adds, “But that’s okay. That’s my job.”

Therein lies Scott’s unique ability to plumb emotional depths without hesitation while simultaneously seeing the bigger, richer picture. In All of Us Strangers, he plays Adam, a screenwriter who’s living alone in a London tower block and has his world turned upside down with a few chance encounters. One is with Harry (Paul Mescal), a neighbor he slowly falls for. Another is with his parents, who died 30 years ago—but appear to him now in the form of Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, as if they had never passed on.

The blossoming of these relationships, within writer-director Andrew Haigh’s daring metaphysical conceit, demands an extraordinary vulnerability from the film’s lead actor—in the biggest screen role of his career, no less. Scott, who is gay, deeply identified with the story’s careful psychosexual impression of queer life and pain, and he brought a great deal of himself to the part: “I’ve never met [Haigh’s] parents, and he’s never met mine, but I felt like that character had to be a weird marriage between me and [Haigh].”

Scott’s pressing of such tender wounds makes for one of the most devastating performances of the year. His tears flow onscreen with the potency of a volcanic eruption. “There’s no way that I was ever going to draw on anybody else’s experience but my own and bring that, even if that makes me feel vulnerable,” he says. “I don’t really mind. In fact, I think it’s a bit of an honor to be able to show that side.” He’s speaking for himself here, but you feel that pride, that gift, as a viewer too. The sense of heartbreak, longing, and hope is so clear, so present, you can practically touch it.

This is not the first significant role of Scott’s impressive career. His portrayal of Hamlet on the London stage earned widespread acclaim. His Fleabag Hot Priest still inspires memes. But as far as top-lining an Oscar-contending movie from a major Hollywood studio, it’s an obvious breakthrough. “Your hope as an actor is that you’re not going to get pigeonholed, or that people don’t cast you based on your box office opening or even the fact that you may not have played loads of leading roles in film,” he says. “When I was growing up, the idea that a film like this would even exist, and that I would be able to play that role in it—it’s miraculous.” And Strangers, hitting US theaters on December 22 via Searchlight, seems to mark only the beginning of a far more public era for the Dublin-born Scott. He has the titular role in Netflix’s fresh take on The Talented Mr. Ripley coming up next.

Yet the unadorned rigor of this stage-trained actor, who recently completed a tour de force Vanya run on the West End, remains firmly evident. He embodies Strangers’ Adam with an intricate attention to physical detail. “You don’t want somebody pretending to be a boy, but you want a sense of the vulnerability of a child, and also somebody who is learning to fall in love as an adult—and how those things are intertwined,” he says. “I don’t know if that is apparent in watching, but it’s a very, very tactile film…. Even the way he is able to be embraced by his parents, and then learns to be the embracer of Harry, it’s something that I had to map out silently for myself.” One lovely scene later in the movie finds Adam back in his childhood home, wearing pajamas and curling up into bed alongside his parents—with, again, all three actors in question roughly the same age. It’d feel absurd, bordering on campy, if not for Scott’s gentle verisimilitude. “I feel very proud of it,” he says of the sequence. “It takes work.”

For Scott, there’s a direct connection between the way he plays a moment like this and the many frank, sensual sex scenes between Harry and Adam. “Adam wouldn’t have really touched many people in a long time,” the actor says. Haigh devises an authentic and gradual trajectory for the character to find himself sexually with the new man in his life—and it’s sold by the sweet, subtle chemistry between Scott and Mescal, who’ve become close friends out of the production. “We have a very special bond,” Scott says. “I think it added something to this burgeoning relationship, because we had a burgeoning relationship ourselves.”

This did not mean the sex scenes were straightforward. The choreography, developed with an intimacy coordinator, needed to be balanced with spontaneity: listening to each other, being present in the moment. Of shooting these sequences with Mescal, Scott admits, “It was a bit scary at the beginning. Then you get more used to it—and he’s great fun. The good thing about working with somebody that you love is that the process is really enjoyable.” The changing dynamic between their characters presented its own challenge. “How do you portray nervousness? How do you portray lust? That’s a really interesting one, and Paul and I’s chemistry in real life is actually kind of irrelevant,” Scott says. “I was playing a very, very lonely, quite repressed character, which I don’t feel in my own life—and that’s a great challenge. It’s wonderful because it speaks to me of empathy, and that’s what our jobs are.”

There, again, Scott reflects on acting in terms of execution. He examines the work, even on a film as intimate and humane as this, like a technician, bringing his best solutions to the complex dilemmas presented by the script. For a film that hit so personally, Scott had to turn inward for answers. “It takes a lot of mental work and my imagination—about what note you should play and, more specifically, when you should play it,” he says. “Our first job as actors is to power into that imagination, so that’s how I would characterize my experience—to really engage in that part of me that exists and is within me in so many ways.” Watch All of Us Strangers, and you’ll see that side of him. To the movie’s ultimate credit, it’s unmistakable.'

#Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #Andrew Haigh #Hamlet #Fleabag #Ripley #Hot Priest #Netflix #Vanya #All of Us Strangers

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i-may-have-a-point · 7 years

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Review of 13x19 “What’s Inside?”

When I first watched the episode, my initial reaction was that it was so awful I didn’t need to write a review. But then I thought that maybe the fact that it was so awful was something I needed to write about. There is a lot to be said about the choices the show isn’t making, so this review really focuses on that.

I get the opening scene completely. As I said in my 13x18 review, this episode is about Maggie accepting her mother’s death, so opening with her visiting her mother's grave makes sense. Now I don’t think this story should have been the one driving the episode, but here we are anyway. As much as I expected a scene with Maggie at her mom’s grave, I was distracted during most of it. I had to watch it twice just to tell you what Mer and Amelia were saying to each other. And the thing that distracted me has been distracting me for a while – Mer’s clothes. For the most part, I think the wardrobe department is fantastic, especially with the women. Each woman has a specific style to their clothing outside of the hospital that reflects their personality well. Even in this scene, Amelia’s leather jacket is a great call back to her edgier Private Practice days. It was a great clothing choice. But it makes the poor clothing choice for Mer even more obvious. Mer’s style is slowing becoming, “Well it looks clean, so I guess I’ll wear it.” And that would maybe be understandable if she was sporting the tired mom look, but since her kids have been in the basement since season eleven, it’s strange. And on top of that this is the second episode of the last three where someone has called Mer hot, so they clearly want to send a message about her appearance to the audience. It’s all very strange.

Eliza, Arizona, and Riggs – For a character that was the catalyst for one of the only story lines the show chose to focus on this season, Minnick has been curiously absent from our screens. I have to think the show got the hint that the fans were not going to be told who to like and decided to pull back a bit. The audience screaming “No!” at Paleyfest when Arizona and Eliza were mentioned had to have grabbed their attention at least a little. Arizona says to Riggs, “It’s just that people are so full of opinions about Eliza…” and I don’t think that was completely about the characters. It feels like Arizona is justifying to the audience why it’s okay for her to be with Eliza. “I’m recently divorced.” (Recent? Define recent because people have had babies and completed cancer trials since your “recent” divorce. Is this another Grey’s timeline black hole?)

Owen and Amelia – Oh look, Owen’s Army friends are happily married and expecting a baby. Good. We haven’t dangled Owen’s dreams in his face in a couple of minutes. Let’s do that again.

April, Steph, Cross – I am so happy to see April back. April/Sarah really does bring a much needed light to the show. It’s not the same without her. I get that this story was supposed to bring the comedy to balance the seriousness of Maggie’s surgery, but it ended up stealing the show. These three do comedy so well. Too bad we won’t see it more often.

Mer and Alex – I just can’t. I need Alex to do something other than prop up Meredith. Even if they want to ignore Jolex, give him anything else to do but that. Please. And this Mer and Riggs will they/won’t they go on a date is not suspenseful. You had sex with him in your car in the parking lot at work, Mer. I think you can eat a meal with him. The audience isn’t feeling a build-up. If anything, we are losing interest and hoping Riggs runs in the other direction.

Bailey and Webber – I almost forgot they were in the episode. When Shonda said this season would focus on the originals I expected great storylines for Bailey and Webber. Instead we got the equivalent of them fighting over Bailey choosing a new friend to do her school project with. They deserved better, but that could be said for most of the characters, so I will just be happy with the fact that it seems the Minnick/Webber storyline may be over.

Cross, Steph, Deluca – Jo Adler (Cross) is such an untapped talent. I get serious early George vibes from him and I love it. So we probably won’t see him again until next season.“I have Obamacare. I have a year left, and I…” You know an episode is bad when I say out loud, “I want to see more of Cross.”

Owen, Jackson, Amelia, Mer – I love that Jackson is always eating. I would stress eat if I worked there, too. As frustrating as it is that we have no Japril scenes, we do get an April mention from Jackson, which I think is significant. This happened in 13x05 as well when she had her first day back to work. They had no scenes together, but he asked about her. So, at least she's on his mind? Sigh. And Jackson telling Mer it’s not normal she operated through a miscarriage was a great moment. Funny. Especially since Owen is the one she operated on, and he is sitting right there.

Mer, Amelia, Maggie – I like Maggie. I do. I mean, I generally like everyone, so I don’t know if that means much. But I’m not invested enough in her character to want to watch three episodes in row basically focusing on her. The show really, really wants me to be, but it hasn’t happened yet. Audience connection to characters has to be organic. It can’t be forced, and it’s just not there with Maggie for me.

Maggie operates – And she is absolutely fine. Sigh. I mean I definitely didn’t want anything bad to happen to the baby or mother, but this story was anti-climactic and so many other stories are just sitting, waiting to be told. If those stories are getting bumped for this one, at least make it amazing.

April, Steph, Deluca, and Cross – Sarah and Jerrika really have a great dynamic onscreen together. I mean Stephanie being Jackson’s rebound sort of cancelled any chance of friendship, but their scenes always catch my attention. I love anytime April is shown as a capable and in control surgeon, so her annoyance at Steph and Deluca was great. Again, these scenes were the best of the show for me.

Mer, Amelia, Maggie - The dance it out scene was inappropriate to me. Shonda puts scenes in like this or a few of them eating lunch together and then tweets, "Oh, it's just like old Grey's!" like that will make us forget this season has been a mess. And dancing it out was a thing reserved for cheating boyfriends or bad days at work, not dead mothers. Dead mothers deserve a scene where they act like adults who are capable of dealing with their emotions and have a conversation. But, of course, we don't get conversations.

Maggie and Jackson - So, I don't see why people are freaking out. I just don't. I've tried. I've watched and rewatched and squinted at my screen. I see nothing. I mean, yes, they have had more scenes together, but absolutely nothing in those scenes has hinted they would be romantic. If anything, Jackson literally called her family. I think what this really is about is the fact that we have had no resolution from Montana so it is easier to see this as a possible reason than to just admit that the continuity and writing have been way off this season. I really think that since JTS was filmed in November, the show wasn't sure where it was going in the line up (they have moved two centrics recently) and they just didn't film anything that would be out of order for Japril. And let's be real. The show knows what they have with Japril. Just look at the publicity and money that was spent on JTS. The other centrics have not gotten that kind of treatment. Jesse and Sarah filmed on location for days with another crew. That location had to be rented. They had to pay the Grey's crew and the other crew at the same time. And the press? I read at least ten articles about JTS from entertainment sites. Jesse and Sarah were sent to the TCAs to promote it. They did the SAG-AFTRA screening, which is a big deal for the Screen Actors Guild to do something like that. Jesse was sent to New York to promote the episode on like five shows. I can't think of any other time the show has spent the time and money on a single episode like they did for this one. They aren't going to throw that away. And those pics Debbie Allen posted hinting that their last scene of the season is a good one? That was intentional. They know that Japril is the biggest couple on the show right now. If they were to trade that to test a relationship between step-siblings, the audience would run. Sure there are about five people who would be fine with it (and I am deeply concerned for them...) but overall I think a large portion of their audience would be done. And that is not to say the show hinges on Japril. I'm not saying that. I just think that would be the tipping point where Grey's has obviously stopped caring about telling good stories and is only trying to be shocking. As an audience we can only take so much of being ignored.

Speaking of being ignored, my heart goes out to hardcore Jolex shippers. Their story, or lack of, has been one of the main reasons this season has been such a let down. 12x24 set the stage for a great Jolex story, and then nothing. And I get that Camilla is pregnant, and obviously her health and the baby's health are more important, but they could say something. Don't just ignore the fans. They set up this season to be a look into domestic violence and Jo's past, and then we get nothing. If it's about her pregnancy, just say "Camilla is focusing on her private life right now, so we are pushing the DV story to next season." Or something! It could be done without putting her business out there but still respecting the fans.

I am an optimist, so I still have hope that the last four episodes will bring back the Grey's we love. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. This was a long one.

#grey's anatomy #13x19 #japril #jolex

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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How 'Sharknado' Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/03/how-sharknado-casts-its-c-listers-and-nearly-landed-trump-as-president/

How 'Sharknado' Casts Its C-Listers and Nearly Landed Trump as President

Months before he declared himself a candidate, Trump was set to play commander-in-chief in the schlocky Syfy film franchise that has lured everyone from Ann Coulter to Charo for cameos while regular Tara Reid makes a quarter of one male co-star’s pay.

In January 2015, two years before he was sworn in as president, Donald Trump was set to step into the same role in a very different capacity: He had signed on to play the president in 2015’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!

Producers’ first choice to play the leader of the free world in the Washington, D.C.-set disaster film was Sarah Palin, but negotiations with the former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee had fallen through. That’s when Ian Ziering, the gung-ho star of the schlocky Syfy franchise, had the inspiration to capitalize on the special relationship he’d developed with Trump while taping Celebrity Apprentice (Ziering made it as far as the penultimate task). His reality TV boss would make a good commander in chief, he reasoned. An offer went out. Almost immediately, it elicited a response.

“The Donald said yes,” recalls David Latt, the 51-year-old co-founder of The Asylum, the off-brand assembly line behind the Sharknado series. “He was thrilled to be asked.”

Alas, Trump never did get to fend off a swarm of hammerheads in the Lincoln Bedroom. (More on why later.) But his story is far from unusual — just one of thousands of familiar faces who have been approached to star in a Sharknado, in what has grown over the course of five films into Hollywood’s D-list answer to a federal jobs-growth program.

“It’s the long-lost love child of The Love Boat and Hollywood Squares,” offers Scotty Mullen, the bubbly casting director responsible for wrangling more than 80 celebrity appearances in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, which airs on Syfy on Aug. 6, with a splashy live viewing party in Las Vegas that night. (In true low-budget form, Mullen does double-duty as the newest installment’s screenwriter.)

It sounds like the recipe for a fatal drinking game, but fret not: You’re not expected to spot them all. Some of these faces are famous only overseas, while others haven’t been seen in decades. But you probably will recognize a few, including Charo as the Queen of England, Fabio as the Pope, Clay Aiken doing a spoof on Q from the James Bond films and Olivia Newton-John in her first screen role in 17 years, playing a scientist who gives star Tara Reid a Grease-style makeover.

If this terrain is familiar to anyone, it’s Charo, a fixture on such stunt-casted 1980s escapist fare as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. The 66-year-old star was already a Sharknado fan when she was approached to play Her Royal Highness. “I think the Sharknado movies are hysterical,” she says, pronouncing it “shark-NAH-doe.” “Nowadays especially, we need shows that put a smile on your face. Coochie coochie!”

Coochie coochie ka-ching, that is: Sharknado has become an invaluable, if unlikely, crown jewel for Syfy, watched by tens of millions around the world (the globe-hopping new film capitalizes on that international popularity), registering billions of Twitter impressions and popping up in everything from Jeopardy! questions to The New York Times crossword puzzle.

But it began as just another title in a string of B-movies commissioned by Syfy — no-budget thrillers with names like Bats: Human Harvest and Mongolian Death Worm. Its path to the screen was fairly straightforward: An executive at Syfy heard the word “sharknado” and said, “I love it. Let’s make it.”

Asylum, which has cornered the market in this strain of cinematic dreck, was brought on to produce. They paid screenwriter Thunder Levin (his real name — “It was the ’60s,” he says) $6,000 to turn the word “sharknado” into an actual story — which he did, concocting a tale of a freak cyclone that scoops deadly sharks out of the Pacific and flings them at unsuspecting Angelenos.

With Sharknado script in hand, producers approached more than 100 actors to play male lead Fin Shepard, including Kevin Dillon, Dave Foley, Seth Green, John Stamos and Fred Durst. All of them passed — even the Limp Bizkit frontman, after being told he could also direct. The closest anyone got to signing on before Ziering was Back to the Future‘s Crispin Glover.

“I ended up in this 30-minute conversation with him during a location scouting in San Pedro,” recalls madcap director Anthony C. Ferrante, whose genuine enthusiasm for the franchise — he coined the word “sharknado” and has helmed all of the films — calls to mind a slightly more self-aware Ed Wood. “He wanted to play Fin like he had brain damage or something. And in my head I’m like, ‘OK — my job here is to make sure he says yes to the movie.’ ” Glover said no anyway.

But then something exciting happened: A legitimately talented and famous actor — John Heard — signed on as the movie’s comic-relief barfly, George. (Heard died July 21 while undergoing back surgery; there was barely a mention of Sharknado in tributes.) Reid was next to board, playing Fin’s ex-wife, April. This was after Teri Hatcher, Rebecca Romijn, Tiffani Thiessen and several others had already passed. Still, Reid was considered a big get for the project, whose title was proving to be a potent actor-repellent. “Tara had a profile,” says Gerald Webb, an actor and casting director who worked on the first three films (and appeared in the second). “Syfy liked her.”

With production commencing and still no Fin, a frantic Asylum went back to Ziering, who had already passed several times, and raised the offer to $100,000, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. Also a key conciliation: The title was changed to Dark Skies. (Syfy later changed it back to Sharknado, much to the cast’s dismay.) At the urging of his wife, who had just given birth and wanted Ziering to qualify for SAG medical insurance, he finally said yes.

And then a funny thing happened on the way to the DVD bin: Something about the movie’s ludicrous title and its cast’s commitment to the equally ludicrous premise (the film climaxes with Ziering’s ex-surf champ diving into a great white with a chainsaw) made Sharknado an instant cultural phenomenon when it premiered on July 11, 2013.

While ratings were modest — 1.37 million tuned in — the film lit Twitter on fire, with everyone from Patton Oswalt to Mia Farrow (“Omg omg OMG #sharknado”) singing its so-bad-it’s-good praises.

As a result, Sharknado 2: The Second One was a very different animal. “Everybody wanted to be involved,” recalls Webb. “Every C-list and D-list actor on the planet.” With the unlikely franchise’s new cachet, Asylum decided to take a kitchen-sink approach to casting, with Latt instructing Webb “to literally ask every celebrity we could think of. We came up with a list of a thousand people, including many A-listers.” Most passed. James Franco was a nonstarter. (There was hope he might be up for a cameo after his arc as a serial killer on General Hospital.) William Shatner’s agent replied with a single word: “Sharkna-no.”

But there were a few notable turns in the New York-set sequel, including Judd Hirsch and Airplane‘s Robert Hays playing into type as a taxi driver and jet pilot, respectively; rapper Biz Markie as a pizza chef; and Richard Kind as a Mets legend who bats a shark into the scoreboard. In many cases, their lines were written when they showed up on set.

Sharknado crews are nonunion (they staged a strike on the third installment and were replaced), but the films are SAG-AFTRA-compliant. “Everyone makes the same amount — a flat rate — and nobody was making close to their quote,” says Webb of the cameos. Asked if the pay — for anywhere from two to four hours of set time — would cover the cost of a Ford truck, Webb responds, “Absolutely not. Well, maybe a really beat-up one that would be at the junkyard a week later.”

Bigger roles, which require several days of shooting, pay more. Chris Kattan, whose career has seen some hard knocks since Saturday Night Live, was reluctant to take a cameo in Sharknado 5 — but was open to playing the meatier role of the U.K. prime minister, a part he approached “dead seriously. They were into me doing it that way.” He has gotten good feedback from his co-stars. “Ian said, ‘You’re going to be really, really happy with it,’ ” says Kattan. “So it’s not like Mariah Carey in Glitter — where nobody said anything.”

Mullen, 37, was a struggling screenwriter working as a publicist when his spec script Double-D Island (“It’s like The Hunger Games but topless”) got him noticed by Asylum, which first put him to work writing jokes for Kelly Ripa on Sharknado 2. “They said, ‘We forgot to write something for her,’ ” he recalls of the fateful phone call. “I said, ‘How soon do you need something?’ They said, ‘Well, we’re lighting her now.’ “

But it’s Ann Coulter whom Mullen credits with his big break. Asylum wanted the conservative firebrand to play the vice president in Sharknado 3, but was having no luck through her agent. Mullen suggested the company go through her publicist — “Sharknado‘s more of a publicity opportunity than a thespian exercise” — and Coulter “jumped at the chance. So then they asked me if I was interested in doing more of this.” Asylum agreed to pay Mullen a per-cameo bonus.

He sees his role as very different from that of most casting directors — people whose calls, typically, are eagerly answered by agents and managers. Instead, Mullen says, “you’re always selling them on the publicity value. An agent won’t care because they just want the money, and there is none. But if you pitch it to the publicist, they see all the value to be gotten out of it. You’re here to ride the hell out of that crazy publicity train.”

If it’s really true that there’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Sharknado is determined to test those boundaries. Some of the most reviled figures in pop culture have popped up as chum. In Sharknado 2 alone, there was Andy Dick (who “was having a tough day that day,” says Webb — Ziering had to hold up cue cards with Dick’s lines on them), Perez Hilton (swallowed whole on a subway platform) and Jared Fogle (“You should really be eating fresh, too,” says Subway’s then pitchman, currently serving 15 years in a federal prison for child porn possession and having sex with minors). Among the few stars Asylum has rejected: porn legend Ron Jeremy, who once stopped by the offices to pitch himself.

Sharknado 3 features a cameo by Anthony Weiner, the disgraced ex-congressman who in May pleaded guilty to sexting with a 15-year-old girl. “I guess I am on that C- to D-level cusp of celebrity that they were looking for,” Weiner told THR in 2015. “But I wouldn’t have conceived of doing it if I were going to play myself.” In fact, a sexting-scandal spoof was exactly what the producers wanted; when Weiner refused, he was enlisted to play a dull NASA administrator instead. Most of his performance was edited out.

For Sharknado 5, everything is bigger, starting with the budget ($3 million, double the cost of the original) and star salaries — Ziering now makes $500,000 per picture. Asylum manages to limit costs when it comes to Reid’s paycheck — she makes about a quarter of what her male co-star earns on each installment. She protested the disparity during the filming of Sharknado 3. Syfy later asked fans whether or not to kill off her character — but the network flatly denies that the two incidents are related. (Fans voted to let her live.) “I think Sharknado cares more about their ‘extra of the day’ than they do about their own cast,” Reid says, clearly weary of the franchise. “You work at something for five years and you don’t get treated as well as someone who shows up for a single day?”

She may be on to something, as the piled-on cameos haven’t added up to higher ratings for the franchise, which peaked at 3.87 million viewers for 2014’s Sharknado 2 before dropping to 2.77 million viewers for 2016’s Sharknado 4. The newest installment — which introduces the concept of wormholes to the, uh, Sharknado mythology — shot on location in London, Tokyo, Rome, Sydney, New York, Los Angeles and Sofia, Bulgaria. Some cameo players were flown to those far-flung places (Greg Louganis jetted off to Sofia to play an art thief), while others (Fabio, Poison’s Bret Michaels — also a Celebrity Apprentice alum) shot a few close-ups at home in L.A., with their stunt doubles in rocker wigs doing the heavy lifting overseas.

Lee Mountjoy, a London-based casting director, was brought on to fill out the ranks and went about enlisting local talent Katie Price (the “Kim Kardashian of the U.K.”) and diving champion Tom Daley — Mountjoy randomly “bumped into him in a train station in London. I said, ‘Do you know Sharknado?’ And he said, ‘Oh, my God, definitely!’ “

Similarly, the Asylum guys ran into George R.R. Martin at a Comic-Con event in 2014, whereupon the Game of Thrones author confessed to being a Sharknado superfan. “I own a theater in New Mexico, and they wouldn’t let me play it,” bemoaned Martin. The producers pulled some strings, and Martin was able to screen the original movie at his theater. (He later showed up in Sharknado 3.)

“We look for cameos from all areas of pop culture to appeal to every fan watching the movie,” says Josh Van Houdt, Syfy’s vp original co-productions. “Whether we’re casting a professional athlete, reality star, actor, musician or politician, our goal is to include a wide variety of stars for viewers to either get excited about or, on the flip side, witness getting eaten by a shark in a spectacular fashion.”

And so it might have been for our 45th president. “We got pretty far,” says Webb of the Trump negotiations. “It was serious talks.” A contract was drawn up and sent to Trump attorney Michael D. Cohen — the same attorney currently under FBI investigation in connection with the Russia inquiry.

But enthusiasm turned into weeks of silence from the Trump camp. Eventually, a reason for the stalling emerged. “Donald’s thinking about making a legitimate run for the presidency, so we’ll get back to you,” Latt recalls Cohen saying. “This might not be the best time.” With the production clock ticking, Asylum pulled the trigger on a backup plan, offering the role to Mark Cuban — a modest casting coup that Syfy trumpeted with a press release.

“Then we immediately heard from Trump’s lawyer,” recalls Latt. “He basically said, ‘How dare you? Donald wanted to do this. We’re going to sue you! We’re going to shut the entire show down!’ ” Contacted by THR, Cohen acknowledges a dinner with Ziering to discuss casting Trump but says he has no recollection of the angry correspondence.

Webb, now at his own production company, is philosophical about the dustup. “I took it personally, but I get it now,” he says. “That was my moment of doing business with Donald Trump. And that’s Sharknado.”

This story first appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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