Kathryn Morris UK

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – March 2020

tracie_thoms_001_430x180 Things around the world are challenging at the moment for everyone. The situation has already caused the pretty much complete shutdown of Hollywood so TV and film production has ceased. This will inevitably impact future KM UK CCCC-ups covering the careers of the other Cold Case cast. So, we will make the most of them when we can.

After last month’s change of pace, starting with one of our less regular customers (Jeremy Ratchford) we’re back to normal service with Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC). In February we mentioned Tracie guest starring in a show I knew nothing about: Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt For The Bone Collector. Turns out Tracie donned the FBI badge again in mid-March, reprising her role as Agent Cutter. I’m confident that Tracie won’t be back again on the show soon, because that second episode was the first of a double that night to mark the end of the season.

News of a guest role like would often be enough for one month, but that’s not the way that Tracie operates. Oh, no. Another show I was not aware of is Station 19. It has been around for a couple of years and is a spin-off from the hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy, this time set in a fire station. Jaina Lee Ortiz (Rosewood), Jason George (Grey’s Anatomy), and Miguel Sandoval (Medium) are amongst the stars. Tracie appeared in the 10th episode of season 3, that aired last Thursday (26th March) on the ABC network. By the look of it this was not the normal brief appearance. Tracie was a significant role that meant Tracie was on screen for much of the duration. She played a psychologist (Dr. Diane Lewis) that came in to talk to the crew after a series of traumatic events.

One thing we would never say to Tracie is “curb your enthusiasm.” She might say it to us as at the beginning of March she guest starred in an episode of the long running comedy show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Tracie worked under the moniker of Female Traveller.

And, we’re not finished with Tracie yet. A few times in recent CCCC-ups we’ve talked about the movie Straight Up. It came out in the US at the very end of February, but Tracie was doing some publicity into March. On the 6th she showed up on the KTLA 5 station Morning News show. You can watch her interview on YouTube HERE.

John Finn (John Stillman in CC) saw is time on the The Walking Dead come to an end. We reported previously John being in the upcoming 12th episode on the 15th of March. As it turns out he was also on the show the week before. However, is was number 12 that saw his dramatic demise. As we saw on Cold Case, John can do noble characters very well, must be why we often see him in uniform. In this case whilst helping to protect a group of children John’s Earl character was attacked by some of the titular creatures and did his best to make sure he didn’t harm the children in his altered state.

We don’t have any specific updates to report on new works by Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC), Jeremy Ratchford (Nick Vera in CC), or Thom Barry (Will Jeffries in CC).

What we do have is a 3-for-1 deal photograph. Early this month Danny ran into two of his old Cold Case colleagues and posted a picture of them together. You can see the image in its original setting on Danny’s Instagram HERE (a copy is in the KM UK Gallery too). I guess Danny didn’t have time to grow a grey beard. Typical

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – December 2019

The December Cold Case Cast Catch-up is made up of two parts. Part number one is the normal monthly latest news on the on-going careers of the CC main actors. The second section will be a look back at the year of CCCC-ups.

Errr… Looks like December has been a relatively quiet month on the news front for all our regulars.

Mid-month Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) was back home in Baltimore to take part in a reading of Thorton Wilder’s short one act play The Long Christmas Dinner. The event was held in the Baltimore Center Stage theatre as part of a fund raising effort to support various programs the venue runs. Written in the 1930s the 30 minute play covers 90 years worth of Xmas dinners of a particular family. Tracie played Leonora, the wife of family member Charles. After the reading there was a discussion/Q&A with the cast and crew.

Earlier in December was the release of the Apple TV+ drama series Truth Be Told. The first three episodes ‘dropped’ on the 6th. The remaining seven have been/will be released on a weekly basis across December and January.

Some of the older people amongst you may remember the sitcom Mad About You, starring Paul Reiser (Stranger Things) and Helen Hunt (Twister). As seems to be the trend these days, the show has been revisited for a new series (crossing fingers for CC). The original ran for seven seasons and 162 episodes starting in 1992. It made the two leads into huge stars. After MAY Paul primarily stayed working in TV whilst Helen mostly shifted to movies. The new series is a continuation of the show, set all these years later. Due to its distribution not being on a major network, despite the original being on NBC, the publicity has been relatively low key. This would be why I managed to miss the fact that Tracie apparently guest starred in the second episode, released on November 20th. That’s my excuse anyway.

Anyone else want to step forward? No?

OK, then Let’s move swiftly on to the review of the year’s reviews.

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Cold Case Cast Catch-up – November 2019

The senility is really kicking in these days! That and real life getting in the way.

Time to catch-up with a Cold Case Cast Catch-up as I managed to miss the traditional end of the month post in November. We can all pretend that instead of being a day short, that November 2019 has 32 days, right? Great! Let’s look (a little further back) at the news of the other members of the Cold Case cast.

Waaaay back at the beginning of the (very long month of) November, just after the last episode of the run, it was confirmed that the FX network TV show Mayans M.C., which stars Danny Pino (Scotty Valens in CC) had been renewed for a third season. Spin-offs don’t often do as well as their originating show; Mayans M.C. is related to the 92-episode, seven season-long hit Sons Of Anarchy; but is this one is going strong. No news on whether Danny will be involved, but I don’t know of any reason why not at this stage.

John Finn (John Stillman in CC) got himself a guest starring role in one of the biggest TVs in the world at the moment that doesn’t involve dragons. It does involve royalty though. A mid-month episode of Netflix’s The Crown saw John as Arthur ‘Bull’ Hancock. He was racehorse owner/breeder from America, who the Queen (now played by the amazing Olivia Colman) met whilst learning about horse training.

Fittingly enough in the middle of October (but not noticed by me until mid-November) a documentary called Somewhere In The Middle appeared on VOD platforms. It is about those thousands of artists who don’t become big names (like those we talk about here), but also don’t leave the business known as show altogether. They keep working at it as a day job, just as the rest of do. The film focuses on 5 artists (actor, sculptor, painter and 2 musicians) and how they deal with is ‘in the middle existence’. How Tracie Thoms (Kat Miller in CC) fits into this I’m not sure, but I think is likely to be in footage of her working with actress Jasika Nicole on the website Send Me: An Original Web Series. As we know Tracie’s in everything so may it’s just that Tracie continues to guest star in the drama series 9-1-1. The latest episode is this very night, November 32nd (aka December 2nd). As noted previously, the Apple TV+ drama Truth Be Told is due to ‘drop’ on the 6th of December. See the previous CCCC-up posts for more details on that.

The next CCCC-up will hopefully be on time and will be a round up of the year’s news.

Kathryn’s Kelly’s Hollywood

This one seems to have passed us all by, but it is worth a bit of digging to find the story behind it.

Brian Donovan was an actor (still is) looking to make it in Hollywood. He had many small jobs across a wide range of TV (Wings, In Living Color, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, General Hospital, Beverly Hills 90210) and films (Gia, starring Angelina Jolie in an early role). He met a lot of different people over this time.

Brian had a younger sister, Kelly, who was born with Down Syndrome. The two of them were very close and as she grew up Kelly proved herself to be a real character and quite the performer, loving the spotlight.

Kelly’s health began to decline and Brian decided to try and make her Hollywood dreams come true. To let her star shine.

The 2015 documentary, Kelly’s Hollywood, is the film Brian made of their journey through this process and the effects it had on both of them.

Kelly was embraced by Hollywood with all sorts of people contributing to this project. A red carpet style première was created, where Kelly turned up in a limousine and faced the paparazzi. Kathryn, Danny Pino and John Finn also welcomed Kelly onto the set of Cold Case to do an interrogation scene with them. In it Kelly was questioned as a suspect in a case involving her favourite actor Colin Firth (A King’s Speech). Detectives Rush and Valens grilled her on her involvement. This whole thing was improvised by them all, not every one could keep a straight face throughout (Kathryn!), and it took some dark turns. Kathryn was also at the première event.

The documentary premièred in October 2014 and had a Los Angeles screening in the January of 2015. Kathryn attended that ocassion, and her and Danny were at a live event where Kelly was on stage with her brother. Danny was one of Kelly’s favourite men and he was great with her.

Sadly, Kelly passed away in 2009 but Brian continues to show the film at festivals around the world as part of campaigns to raise awareness of disabilities and that people should not be defined by them. Kelly wasn’t going to let hers stop her enjoying life. Brian continues his acting work, mostly doing voice work in Naruto anime games in films.

Kelly’s Holllywood was shown on the Showcase network and is now available on Amazon Video, free to Prime subscribers, in the UK and US. I’ve posted a very small selection of not-so-great quality screencaps in the Gallery to give you an idea of Kathryn’s appearance in the film, and a couple of photos related to the première event. There is a trailer and few videos out there if you want to see them. Check out the full film if you can.

Cold Case Cast Catch-up – July 2019

john_finn_001_430x180 If you are bored of the English weather, just wait a short while and it will change. We’ve gone from the hottest day on record to rain the likes of which even we don’t see very often. We try to keep thing hot and pouring in the monthly CCCC-up news round-ups of Cold Case cast members (plus a few significant others) on-going careers. Here is July 2019.

Let’s start with a bit of news/not news/maybe news. I could have completely missed this previously but John Finn (John Stillman in CC) is being listed as a cast member of a TV movie called Republic Of Sarah. It is quite common for pilots of possible TV shows to be listed as TV movies prior to the switch to series. Occasionally the not picked up to series pilots are actually released as stand-alone TV movies. The arc of this news appears to be a pilot for a new CBS series announced in March, various cast members ‘attached’ over the coming weeks, and filming taking place late March/early April. Fast forward a month to mid-May and the announcement the network will not be moving forward. Now I’m seeing some updates being made to the IMDb page this month. We should probably assume that Republic Of Sarah is not going any further but it was worth noting it’s brief existence. For completeness the show was about a town in New Hampshire discovering it has a valuable resource in its midst and declaring itself an independent nation as a result. Jeffrey Paul King, writer/producer on Elementary, wrote Republic Of Sarah. Sarah Drew (Grey’s Anatomy) was the lead, the titular Sarah Cooper. James Lesure (Las Vegas), Kirsten Nelson (Psych), and Jonathan Slavin (Better Off Ted, any excuse to mention that show). John is listed but doesn’t have a character name. I’m tempted to suggest it was likely to be as Sarah’s father.

In definite John news, we have another trailer, the 3rd by my count but the 2nd to others, for the space epic Ad Astra. Brad Pitt continues to star as the astronaut looking for his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones). We get to briefly see and hear John in this one. The Moon features a few times too, possibly as a nod to the recent anniversary of the first Moon landings. Watch the latest trailer HERE on YouTube.

In ‘I dunno’ news, the same Comic-Con I haven’t referred to yet in this piece, saw a trailer shown for season 10 of The Walking Dead. John starred in the previous run. I don’t know if John’s character will return or even if he survived season 9. There were some big casting upheavals for the show before the previous season, which will have had an impact on the audience figures, so they may have made further changes to try and get things back on track. However, I don’t watch the show so am far from well placed to comment. Feel free to educate me in the comments below.

As reported here last month, the second season of FX network’s Sons Of Anarchy spin-off Mayans M.C. is due to première on the 3rd of September. At the recent Comic-Con in San Diego attendees were able to watch a sneak peak. Just before that a promo trailer was released which shows Danny Pino (Scotty Valens on CC) returning as Miguel Galindo. He’s looking very sharp with his facial hair and suit. Some may prefer he donned the biking leathers. Each to their own. You can see the trailer on YouTube HERE.

The September 2018 CCCC-up first mentioned that Cold Case creator Meredith Stiehm was writing the small screen adaptation of Cristina Alger’s book The Banker’s Wife. It was ‘optioned’ (meaning a contract was in place to turn it into a TV show or film) before the book was even published! Impressive. Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike was said to be starring and exec producing. Also impressive. In the past few days it has been announced the 8-part series has been ordered for production by Amazon Studios for it’s Prime Video service. Rosamund is no longer involved, she has another Amazon show instead, but Homeland director/producer Lesli Linka Glatter will be directing all eight episodes. This is a reunion of sorts as Meredith was, of course, a writer and producer on Homeland. No word yet on Rosamund’s replacement as the star or the taker of the role as the other of two women search for answers after a plane crash. Could the people behind Cold Case and Homeland think of two great female actors to lead such a project…?